Down Town
Lest you walk through her streets,
and feel the granite at your shoulder,
taste the stone of old bridges
Bow waves at her supports
Surging torrents of energy through the eyes
You shall not know her beauty.
My dreams are still in the cupboard
With jars of marmalade
And dinky china cups, lightly dusted
And waiting in the corner of an old video store
By the cheap B—movies,
In my new jacket, going through every title
Called out on her whisper,
I trust her, and love her
as she cradles me in her womb.
If we are to look at the void
To see the space
Between the leaves
Of a Japanese landscape
Or a Mies Van Der Rohe
Then why do we focus on the form?
It is the swirling blocks of water
The Great Wave that I seek
Turbulent, violent and deathly,
that moves beneath me
Steadily taking what we put before it
century after century
What of the sky?
The deep hues of yellow and blue tinged grey
that like a theatre cyclorama
Are draped behind our flights of fancy?
And through,
the sun behind
our most assured and heroic
hard—edged city block
and its nearest neighbour,
There is presented a tapestry
of the perennial fight for clarity
a view to space, and the eternal
That war for rectitude,
of the disappointments and sorrows
cast upon us.
Must the way be clarified?
For that which only masquerades as truth
is often dressed in comedy.
(2012)
