Epiphany
On the radio,
where music has been unspooling uselessly,
I
recognize the pan of Dvořák’s camera across the galaxy,
Its
slow zoom onto something small – it could be me.
Pushing
aside the insidious connection with the Hovis advertisement
(brown
bread – dead), I soar; largo: a slow, broad, dignified treatment.
There’s
an elsewhere here too: Bieszczady, a prickling sentiment.
Under a
night’s vast sky, the crouched, looming mass of trees
huddled;
shuffling together around the lake, brought to their knees,
They
whispered dark prayers, a confessional sifting of leaves.
I am
old technology and my tape player whirred and stuttered
The New
World Symphony, from the Proms; a candle guttered
With
the breeze rising up from the shore, a promise uttered
In an
inflated currency. The wooden cabin
creaked like a ship
And I
gripped the handrail of the veranda, leaning against the tip
Of sky
and sea, of stars and planets, feeling suddenly adrift
High
above the lake, with its glittering slick of moonlight;
The
music sublime. Then there are those
moments, those slight
Pauses:
the meaning is in the waiting: a sudden grasp, then the slide …
I
picked up my bottle and followed a path to the lake side,
Stumbling
through the trees and over roots - the pauses held
Inside. I sat on a rock close to the water’s edge,
still thrilled
By the
light of Armstrong’s moon, its near reflection broken into timid
Splinters,
trembling just beneath the surface, the water brimming
At my
feet, somniloquent and restive. I heard
the doleful lowing
Of a
distant cow, the closer engine hum of a frogs’ chorus revving
In the
autumnal air (though still August), the gulp of a fish surfacing.
I
listened to the dark radio of the lake with its glowing
Points
of stations broadcasting tinny music and frail human voices,
Snatches
of songs, laughter, across its caliginous breadth, noises
Keeping
loneliness at bay; still I held on tightly to the pauses:
Wide
open spaces big enough to begin a whole world, a whole new world,
Yet
small enough to live in, to be a part of.
In the beginning was the word …
If I
could hear it … but the pauses lengthened, became silence, emptiness, a void.
Suddenly
filled with it - weightlessness: a transparency holding light. “Here I am!”
Nothing
but the echo of my voice travelling towards me, away, across space and time,
The
trees lifting their heads, wringing their hands at the soft urging of the
water’s solipsism.
It was
a conundrum, an anagram. In answer, a
dog barked backwards across the lake.
A dog
in the manger! A dog’s dinner! I hurled my empty bottle into the black
Water
and clambered back up the hill to open another: I had a thirst to slake.
So a
memory is fashioned to furnish a life, to adorn its dark corners: a threadbare
Sentimentality
that makes it feel lived in, like home.
And to know now that it’s not where
Or when
or if or how; and there’s no what or why to release a breath held – a pause –
In a
life’s prayer: No elsewhere, but here.
Click on the link to listen to the second movement of New World Symphony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHyN3izk38c
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