|
CvK |
Watermarks |
|
|
VI. The Storm |
|
And after massing
silence: sea-calm, the men idle
by the quays, chapped fingers
grope for fissures in rotting
nets. Too still to sail: fish swim deep in
heat. Too still. They wait the
storm, nigredo in bell-jar gape of
ocean’s mouth, waiting changes, and from
water-black moment is movement. The birds have turned to the branches
and do not sing. He is black and
disremembered, thinking of
unforgetting. She is black, tearing
ceaselessly at our indolence, hard as
ebony. Swart our tongues in dryness. The silence and
the slaughter is, and its falling
quieter than snow in eyeless
forest. When the gust begins out there from
beneath the waves and yonder shore
beyond the buckling curve is
break. Horses caparisoned in jet paw the
face of separation fierce hoofs
pierce the crust of sand. The eyes of men
lift, garner the gale and fear the
wind. The buzzing gadfly sting our flanks –
the cry. The hawk shot from crags
welcomes the wind and lifts with
drift over air-blown, from deep-lunged
distances. Blind owl from trunk beats
unheard with slicing talon. All is turning now
through streets, forest; all is changing,
falling towards the centre, the pivot: boats against shingle, leaves against
bough; patterns turning towards towered omphalos
of rock, the mandala centre is empty,
black, whole consuming, holding nothing,
hunger of maw, of pyx, seat and throne of
sudden transformations mixed out of
darkness, burning towards the core of,
vacant in, end wide of the
calling O of Omega. |