Intermezzo

Trascrizione ai sensi della normativa sull'accessibilità web

Intermezzo

—i.m. Don Maclennan 1929–2009

In the middle of contemplating the strangeness of what
you might call ‘being conscious of self and world’,
I thought to ask what your ideas on the matter were,
imagining I’d find you asleep in the garden, your face
shaded by a battered old hat perched at
an odd angle, a book of Seferis half-open in your lap.

The photograph I have of you sitting in a striped deckchair
reminds me of just such a post-prandial afternoon
one spring when food and wine had all but overtaken speech
and intermittent conversation catalogued the losses
that accumulate: lovers; certainty; the strengths
we need to solve the singular puzzles of a sheer rock-face.

Bashō got it right. Examined up close, our anchors of love,
faith and joy, are fleeting, unfixed, more air
than anything else. Nothing’s ever the same as it was
a moment ago, before you read the lines you wrote.
Everything requires remaking and renewal.
That the centre doesn’t hold doesn’t matter—it never did.

“Blue Rivers” (Snailpress/Crane River 2011)