IN ONE MINUTE
in one minute in Spain, two men who have been raised as, and loved each other as, brothers, kill each other with knives. A sparrow, midway through its migratory travail, collapses between wingbeats and falls from the sky. A woman who has known only sorrow, and despair, in a life torn rough hewn from the cradle of horror that was war, dies, and welcomes release and reunion. A boy, held in an embrace for the first time, fails in his love-making, but is clasped even tighter in love.
in one minute a child is born, whose destiny, were it laid out on a page before his parents, would lead them to drown him; ignorant, his mother suckles him in this first minute, while his father, ecstatic at a boy, looks on proudly, jealously. An old man, close to the end of his life, leafs through a photo-album, his eyes refusing to cry as his heart splinters inside him, the faces and the places lancing into his flank.
in one minute, in a place where men seldom have reason to go, a brute intelligence flicks out and kills, cleanly, devouring its meal before the minute is up, lying still again, predatory. In one minute, faith is tested to limits that should explode it, and in one soul it is blasted away, but in another it is strengthened. In a separate part of the world, in a night she entered willingly, a victim lies dying, wondering at the pain, the suddenness, not knowing why, not comprehending, feeling only seconds, excruciating instants, left in her. In the same part of the world, not so far away, the man who had stalked her for her hair, her walk, and something he had cut to find, vomits empty handed, the search incomplete.
in one minute around a table set for a feast, a family shatters; in one minute a champion is defeated, and spurned by those who'd fawned; in one minute a dream dies under the weight of the world, and is reborn in some other breast somewhere else, immortal and fickle, eternal and cruel, as only dreams are.
in one minute a faithful dog turns on his master; an ageing lover dumps his mistress for a younger girl, whose athletic carnality will kill him within the year; an elephant, old but not a rogue, lord of his herd, is struck and dies on a lonely African road, leg shattered by a device buried to destroy men with different ideas by men with different ideas.
in one minute a bride pledges her troth, and the flower is bright and fresh in the groom's lapel. In one minute, an airliner, a routine flight, is grounded in a desert kingdom, and helplessly marooned - the passenger surrounded by his peers, doctors returning from a convention, dies for want of the right wattage. In one minute a petty thief cudgels his victim too hard and earns Cain's brand. In one minute a young woman lifts herself from her lover's exhausted form and knows she has been cheated.
in one minute a painter, with one masterpiece left in him, burns the unmarked canvas. In one minute, a gifted violinist, careless with a match and a stove, burns his hand - skin-grafts will restore its appearance, but the fire has exorcised the demon of his genius. In Australia, an old storyteller dies, his treasures not inherited, and his people lose themselves and don't know why, but know how, and howl their rage. In Britain, a young man, excitedly, lifts his eyes from the microscope, and savours immortality. In Naples, a man who scoffed at the legend, dies under a bus. In Peking, a wall poster is removed, no less finally than its author. In San Francisco, a tremor fibrillates the business sector. but not a single tram is de-railed. In one minute a shape moves across the face of the Moon, a sound echoes from a deep valley, smoke rises from a forest.
In the next minute, things go on as they were, or are lost.
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FILE UNDER
File under ‘Mystery’,
File under ‘Unsolved’,
File under anything you like;
That’s you and me.
File under ‘Pending’,
File under ‘To be investigated’,
File under a rose bush;
Just don’t be far
When I’ve come to see
What you and me is to be (that – then – could not not)
And I come to you
Just like (never) before.
We believe
What we wish
Until we are shown it is impossible -
And are ‘Grown up’.
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FACE THE WIND
The old Eskimo rolls himself into the snow,
Just as he always knew he would
When he sensed the time to go.
His eyes are shutting as he lies and wonders how
He may yet return.
The snow hardens over and round his last igloo,
That has no smoky flame, whale-fat and butter,
Or furs and brothers and children and wife.
Hood thrown back, his red and chapped face is bare.
Wind stroked, storm carved, the cold is no stranger to it.
He hardly feels the icy creeping in
At all the stays and corners where he's blocked it out
For almost the longest lifetime
Far-dead elders could otherwise recall.
Still: still, the world is still.
The steppe-winds are silent as he mouths his last supplication.
Now his mind is free to wander through
The inner wastes of a gutted life:
Birth and cold.
Youth and cold.
Love, and cold.
The hunt and cold.
Joy and cold.
The years passing like the carcasses of beached whales, and cold.
The whale - will the old nemesis killer
Claim his stiffened perfect body
When the little thaw comes?
Or might his children's children,
Digging blocks to make a lodge
Trip into his glacial, ice-locked form,
And recognising the signs and symbols
Of his family and ranks,
Lift him out and take him further
To the deeper snows?
This choice of death is no hiding -
More the giving up of space to life.
His rascal grandchildren have not eaten well this season.
His sons, still strong men and brave,
Have returned empty-handed so many times from the hunt
That his wiser eyes have thought some angry god might have turned,
Turned a stony face towards them.
But this is not so.
He has seen worse times, and then the old men,
Singly,
Have walked out into the wind and dark,
Not returning.
He has lived so long as this on such timely dignity,
And now he lies face upward to face the same.
He is dead long hours before he realises,
And smiling, watches his white spirit,
No longer cold,
Join the winds that are his own people,
Passing through.
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THE COLOUR OF...
His eyes, the colour of wheat, thrust forth from his skull as if it were a headpiece filled with straw. He has something for every occasion;
A shade
An element of style
Founded in
Artifice.
He surrounds himself with others
Less worthy than he
The stronger to reflect
Himself.
It is strange then
That he becomes more like them
Than they, he,
And the magic that first attracted them
Has gone.
They will not leave him;
For even the husk, the rind,
Of a decayed dream, is preferable
To admitting the wasted years
Of hollow discipleship.
The rituals continue,
In imitation and barely perceived loss,
The meter more important than
What it had contained.
When it was full, gestating,
A glow of companionship,
Of running with the pack,
Of following the leader,
Of playing games as adults play,
Putting off initiation day.
Fathers and mothers practise repudiation
So that their children will not leave
Scars.
Time floats down like a web
In the corner of their eyes
And thinning lips,
While mirrors can be counted on to lie.
Followers embrace you, but the energy is gone,
And the laughter is all reminiscence,
Nothing fresh.
Friends are such a burden,
Imposed into your life.
They know too much about you,
And share it like a Maya knife.
Youth, that mirage,
That fanciful regret,
The last refuge, the secret place,
No secret, no reality
A party table vignette.
A scent of olden days,
The olden days of childhood
When simplicity was bloody,
The path to ‘go’ direct.
He is a perfect creature
Turned out, spruced up
Scion of his breed
A totem for his age
Who grasp at such things.
It is true that figures of worship
Also inspire revulsion.
What a mystical idea
To love and hate
In such a rondel
Of hollow rhyming:
A fluttering observance
That we should all smash idols!
Oh, why do we raise them?
The resonation of drums –
Stretched flesh,
And air.
Shivering.
The loneliness of night;
Alone in consciousness.
A weight of. . . .
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THIS DESIRE
This desire,
A startlement of remembrance,
Recalls no ceasing.