Celia, the Sea Does Not Remember You Waves are not waves But the convulsions of a body That has forgotten the bones it conceals. The sea a wound that refuses to close. Celia goes there because the sea soothes her. She goes there because the air cools her. She observes gannet and curlew As one watches The slow collapse of a star. A big black sea bird stands in the surf Like an officiating priest. Its eyes are two shells Filled with the residue of night. Around it, strands of t

Dreams, Memories, Visions Of life as a ‘story of the self-realization of the unconsciousness’ ... p. 17 Digging up bones and a little light in fog ... pp. 104, 107 Walking through a valley to hand a goddess an umbrella ... pp. 155, 161 § Of trees as the embodiments of life’s incomprehensible meaning ... p. 86 The bitterness of Freud and the analogy with God ... pp. 75, 175 A white dove transformed into the ghost of a customs official ...

The Beast Between the Marble and the Heap, Or: The Mammoth Between the marble wall of City Hall and the slow‑rotting heap of broken crockery and dusty old books — the beast stirred. To think it once tore open the earth with its tusks, raising mountains, or guarding the spirits of the underworld. Now its fur rotted to a brittle husk — the mammoth preserved without reason — the mammoth. Among the first of God’s works, it had been among us from

If the Rain in Warsaw Sounds Like This From a secret they shaped A room in London— A breath of space Lit by a single candle’s hush. Out there the war was cold, Close to freezing. But they were warm within. Stillness gathered. They listened to icy rain Softly striking stone— Each drop a touch, A covert word Only they understood. It was a fragile pact: Two selves from opposing worlds, Folded into one, Briefly, tenderly. Then a man fro

A Ghost As If I am not your keeper O ghost who crouches At the grave of my father. The body is dead; it is in the shade. A pale figure with a sheet for a robe rises from the earth (His hair black as ravens' feet). With cold-clay fingers, He could quell the soul’s fire. As if. A seagull cries In the salted air Like a baby Calling for its parents. There is blood on the land, Blood in the rivers too. You are not what you appear To thi

A Dark Illumination Once again, we are here, as we are on this day every year, two hearts lit up with pain. And as day falls into night, a little candle illumines this dim corner where we half-appear. And every flicker, like every breath, is a discrete sensation of hurt, one after the other. It is always the same. Her sitting there, Me sitting here (still wearing yesterday’s shirt). Look at the light. How can a flame smaller than a baby’s fist,

Bergson Memory is a cloud wherever my body is; A fog of the virtual enveloping the actual. The past contracts to the present at the point Of sensation, then widens again: a mutual Interpenetration of time. I see into things, See them whole, unique and ineffable: God’s gift of intuition.

A Jazz Trombone Extends a Metaphor, the Length of a Memory A jazz trombone extends a metaphor, the length of a memory. With a memory, my grandfather says, You got to hear its pitch, its tone & blow life into it, then you retract, Slide right on back to Winter ‘69 When the Big Band scene died or the 1956 Klan attack on Nat King Cole; More often it’s1930s Long Island NYC Where his father met his mother (my great-grandmother) & you’re right there on a corner in Bro

Time and Rust Fog swirls, curls around vans, cars, slips ghostlike through bare branches. A neighbour snorts into a handkerchief made (he says) from Greengate cotton. “Yesterday, before the snow, three old horses munched wet grass as I walked through the relics of the Wet Earth Colliery, which on reflection, were beautiful objects of time and rust.”

Relics Yesterday, before the snow, three old horses munched wet grass as I walked through the relics of an abandoned colliery, which on reflection, were beautiful objects of time and rust.