Thoughts have no temperature…
an idea is only as exciting
as the horse it rides.
The heart’s the measure, not the mind.
The bee and the swallow and the cirrus
are in league
a league of late summer evenings
packing trunk for the next term at school
at the end of the Summer hols.
Now, by the light of the Leonid showers, the sharp winds blow down from the snowfields, bathing in November-moon’s frozen lamp, dusting ice along the ridges that
only days ago
were echoing
to beech’s gold & birch’s brown.
Holiness, always, is in everything beyond, reached only in languages that court & do not possess –
control, articulation: always our greatest weaknesses –
we have dominated, not danced with
our fellow travellers in time.
The bee and the swallow and the cirrus and
eternity
are in league.
The heart’s the measure, not the mind.
An ocean came
and took away my voice.
There is a music in the light of things
as filled with silences and space
as any coloured forms
are facetted
with well-pitched planes and angles, set
to tempt the word-smith mind both into, and
away from grace.
These rhythms inhabit me
and speak with clarity
beyond all hope of concept’s reach.
Light, rhythm, silence, space,
enjoined as joy
in me.
The architecture of absolute nothingness; that
the material world may indeed be
an artefact of
something for which there
is no physically certain being
since forms themselves, like space and
time, are relations, rhythms, compulsions
architecture of no known
possibility
the description of which
in the desiccated language of
Science simply leads us further from
that which seers have known
in the language of unknowing.
And have we ever wondered why it is
that Science powers technology so
faultlessly and yet
fails the spirit so utterly?
That its descriptive language is
a selection only of the pieces that fit
a mechanistic mind – that it’s a tool
which manipulates brilliantly, but which
actually UNDERSTANDS NOTHING:
a source of great power that drives
the chess pieces of our evolutionary
game, that makes no difference
to that moment
between our lonely walking
self and the far horizon over low-tide
when wind first chills.
But the humming busy air or the endless spray
the surging blood knocking the heart all over
its silly kennel
the wild
immensity
of even the tiniest corner of
a summer’s evening
here is a tumult
in the pine needles
as wind and hail rocket by
that soars
that moves us with a touch that though it
could be explained,
cannot be taken back
by explanation,
because its real truth is
awe, & comfort,
& incomprehension.
Ultramarine ash is the painter’s colour, the true spirit of risen silver in the ocean’s halo, as spray-topped ranks of sun-touched waves roll forward under the soaking fringes of cloud:
shadows and rays,
swell and counter-swell
criss-crossed with a maze
of foam and light
shadows and rays
over swell and silver blaze
the sea is so young
its moods passing quick & clear
as a child’s eyes
its urge innocent
and perpetual,
beautiful and soulful
and lost in its own ways;
are we, in our spirits,
not creatures of the sea?
Standing fortresses
ranked ancient as any on earth,
the great granite stacks shelve backward
in retreat that is aeons old & aeons slow
the land is full of history, generations
compile their marks,
this is what we know, and where we are.
In grooves and hollows, dust of our
small bones makes soil enough for the coming
blooms.
Caught between hill and wave we try to dance
our spirit on the sand, making marks in the
sea’s way – but tide’s encroachment
licks the prints away
and we, in our hearts, as in our bodies,
are creatures of the land.
But still the spirit persists – Canute, Cahulain, Quixote
For I have touched the heart
the living tremor
shaking, singing,
pulsing in all
& its swirling
turbulence
is the movement of oceans
and aeons,
the land as the sea
as an eyelash confused
by a sun flash
the touch of this spirit
is the touch of love,
there is no kindness
there is no embrace,
no mother’s words or
rock-like father’s arm
has love like this
its gift
lifts
into light of the soul
all which we
otherwise mangle with the mind
for there is madness,
hard, frightening, cold-bred terror
in the ownership of everything
through the conspiracy of
language
where words are strung together
like nooses
to ensnare
thruths
which exist always
beyond comprehension
OUT THERE HERE WHERE
& all around
for wisdom, beauty, spirit
are not accumulations are they
but the sounds we have
when noises stop
& what we make
or do
- our dance –
is all the better for its directness &
purity
for dance we must
& all our great edifices of
ideas, of information,
our piles of culture & comment
history & heritage –
they’re all
only insecurities
because we’re scared, when the
noises stop,
that we may not hear the
music,
that the tune may be weird
that Love may not be ours.
& So we go,
so elaborately so,
endlessly recycling our
own superfluities
& concreting over the trembling
gentle heart, which is our path to God.