A deepening depression centred on the Baltic area
Here the road wanders out towards Sysne headland.
The horizon portions out a sea
constantly new lines that time after time
turn over the same worn-out truths.
The sky is coarsely grey
and so low one kneels down. A stroke of memory
might have lingered over the rocks
and the brushwood for a moment glittered like viper’s bugloss.
No memory exists.
Behind the window of the boatswain’s cottage
a Nietzsche bent with old age is glimpsed
swearing at the smoking wick of the lamp:
it’s delaying his final work,
‘The death of Tragedy’. The rickety ladder
the old women from the village used
when they scrubbed the sky clean in spring
lies on the doorstep, chopped up as firewood.
The tree in the front yard is crushed together
like the teaching aid’s T-Ford
when it approaches the speed of light.
No heart is large or simple.
Even the grass lies low.
Only between the newly written waves
can one with a little effort read
how history insists even so.
No comments:
Post a Comment