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Nigel McLoughlin |
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Voyage Sail westward, my father said, and back fifty of us ventured into the night-lit sea to board a boat in an attempt to figure for ourselves a place that might afford a future in a world six-weeks from disaster. (Nothing concentrates the mind as much.) Having drawn lots among the tribe it fell to three men (drawn from thousands) to go with us. The women's backs, though slender, were loaded up. We knotted ropes around our midriffs, attached the sealed jars of fresh water (as precious as our future) in between the bodies, and at last the line of figures began to move. From shore we became transfigured by the moon to back-lit gargoyles, bent and drawn into the oddest shapes by these burdens. Few chores were as tedious as this, but by the sweat of our backs we moved all the provisions into place. The sea was coming to a swell and it was felt that nothing could be gained by waiting. Our tears melted into nothing. We knew our farewells never reached those tiny figures left behind us on the shore. That night I couldn't see a stime, the moon set and clouds were drawn like blinds across stars. There was talk of going back and many worried voices arguing about our future. The doubters were convinced by those few sure that we could see the voyage to completion, nothing could be gained by whingeing or wishing to be back at home. Through the night, we saw omens that pre-figured alternate small successes, massive failures, drawing through us waves and swirls and eddies like the sea: a flight of geese we guessed were going south, sea- lions that came right up to the ship and gulls like vultures that swooped at us and tried to steal the food. Drawing on the deck the pilot tried to check his bearings, northing the ship (as far as he could tell). I tried to check his figures but couldn't fathom the front of his workings from the back. In the end there was nothing to do but trust him (or that the sea would guide us to our future). In any case we'd been drawn too far from home to figure out how to go about turning back. Inscape Where the heart is filled with all the wild imaginings children know, eyes that eddy like dark water call the faller from the bridge and the same wind that ruffles leaves can sunder limbs of spruce and fir and fill the air with a tang of sap, the adrenal odour of beasts. A place as bitter cold as a halfling's heart where there is no fear of dark, but the intimate knowledge of everything the darkness might contain. Terzanelle for a Killing There I was, standing on the height, squinting toward the sun, my sight blurred by the constant strain, my tears rainbowed by the light. I saw a hawk gyre round his game, catch the air, stand at eye-height not twenty yards distant. I swear he plucked the bird clean and banked right, strained his body to a blurred stain in his dive as he stooped and righted, turned and sped sunward like a ricochet and left me standing on the height astounded, short of breath, asway (until I found my feet), breathing, delighted that I had not stained my blurry brains on the rocks below. With all my might I flew down that hill like a man astray. An understanding carried from that height and blurred inside me like a muted strain. Strandhill A cold Atlantic breeze embracing, retaining, is reclaiming her own to the sea. The sea is hushing, hushing me west into the sun. Below the storm beach the tides are turning, spreading, creeping over the sands. The sands are shifting, shifting always beneath my feet. Above a cloudy sun is hazing, blinding, baking the sea, the sand, and I. And I am chasing, chasing shadows from the beach. And all through time the dark returning, is palling, stealing away this place. This place is dreaming, dreaming of the sleeping and the waking, of the living and the dead. Arrival A dark bulk of island rose out of a black sea, defined itself, rigid against the gun-metal dawn. After an hour of hard rowing, where the gale battered our backs and the oars wracked and groaned at the gunnels, our hull ground against shingle and we beached her up the slippage, dropped the stone to weight her against the tide and leapt waist deep competing for the honour of first ashore. I climbed the dunes, surveyed the distances, smiled my way back to where I could hear, already, the dull thud of hammers staking out our claim. The babbling poet spoke his incantation, but this process was to be a slow one. No high verse was substitute for axe and wood and sweat where we built shelters, fires and pitched the king's tent. That night we stayed beside our fires while the king retired to his wife. The dogs were tied but restless, scenting strangeness on the air. There was foreboding among us and some prayed, some sacrificed, mixing blood and fire, pouring over entrails and ashes, divining omens - most of which were bad. Tomorrow, we would inch inland. I spent the night tending to my weapons. Going West At the foot of the gable, that stands like a tomb, I hear the river's prayer percolating stones. Words are dying all around this glen, I hear them dissipate west into the sun. How long before this field is nameless? Before the land itself gives up its grip on words that echo out of this valley, exit the world? I feel the night falling, a smothering darkness lying on rocks, winding shrouds of silence around ground. Like the wind rattling through the hillside trees, my pen scrapes at the paper, and before I know it, night has strewn itself on the stones, so softly it might be the sea's prayer on the rocks, eroding, eroding. |