The self and the other, a poem

In the last poem, Imago, there was the idea of a second self, a pure self - an alter ego, a possibility awaiting realisation: the voice in our head that speaks to us of us.
It is a fiction, of course - the story of us that we tell ourselves - an apocrypha, a shadow on the wall of our cave.

Second Coming

He was a long time coming,

A hard time we had of it:

Climbing the mountain took his childhood,

The summit never in view, always over

The next rise; the deferral of arrival.

Swimming the ocean found him struggling

To keep his head clear of the waves

That rolled over him, yet pushed

Him forward while the undertow

Pulled at his tired, aching limbs,

Leaving him washed up on the shore

Of middle-age.

The desert crossing was death:

The scenery unchanging and endless;

The heat dried him out,

The thirst was memory –

Unquenchable and imprecise.

And at night the chill broke his bones;

The swallowed sun shattered to a myriad stars,

Each one a candle his breath couldn’t reach,

A thousand birthday wishes he could no longer make.

Yet finally they went out, not of a sudden,

But one by one by one by one …

The darkness reaching back,

Stretching ahead.

He had always been a long way off,

Too far back to catch up,

And I’d lose sight of him,

For years … out of mind.

Then I’d see him, distant and dim,

Dwarfed by the mountain,

Or bobbing like a cork;

Swimming in the heat haze,

Or shimmering with the cold.

Then, finally, not quite erased,

He’d disappear again,

And I’d wonder if he’d’ve recognised me,

Or I him; We’d travelled so far.

The day he passed me by,

I was certain it was him,

But I couldn’t call out.

How sure his step was;

How I envied his glide, his grace.

How could I have doubted him?

Why should he not leave me behind?

Stepping over the divided line.

The world, after all, was his:

The mountains, the seas, the deserts.

There is darkness in the jungle.

God will not tread here:

The trees do not believe,

And the fruit ripens in the mouth.

I lift my snout from the muddied puddle,

Sniff the air, and scenting danger,

Scuttle back to my burrow.

 

There was so much to say,

And yet when I found him

Shivering in my dimly-lit cave,

Flickering like a candle flame,

Our shadows made monstrous

On the damp walls,

Our breath mixed and condensing,

The light simply went out.

We were extinguished, Plato.

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