Dark MarbleOn the top floor of the museum at night, everything below in flames. But it's cool here, dark and quiet. The floors and walls are black marble veined with pale grey and yellow; inset in alcoves are various allegorical or alchemical figures and I touch each one lightly, hoping to understand the sequence. China vases my own height, thick with dust. A few windows high up let in a little starlight. Slowly I become aware of a confused roaring and I realise it's the fire downstairs. I start to panic and make for the stairs but as I turn a corner to the stairwell it's suddenly deafening and the floor is starting to buckle. I grab the bannister and the top step gives way – through my mind as I fall it flashes that no one will ever see these vases and figures again. I come to, briefly, but it's chaotic, running through a kind of formal garden with high hedges, stumbling over sudden shifts of level, there's no view, no horizon, I'm dodging through other people now who are all ignoring the building in flames behind us. I dash through a topiary arch and on the other side is a beach. At last it is cool again, salt air and the roaring of the flames is now a roar of wind in my ears, slow crunch of waves on the hard grey sand. I walk along the water's edge, just taking it all in, the emptiness, till on a rocky outcrop up ahead I notice there's a ruined house. At least a part of the roof is still there, though the doors and windows are missing. I should feel afraid but I don't, I walk in, looking from one mossy room to another. In an open chamber overlooking the sea I find a man at a desk, bearded but maybe not really older than me, a mess of bird's nest in his hair, scribbling fitfully in a large book. I peer over his shoulder and recognise scraps of old Cornish but no pattern, I think he's trying to catch the words in the air and I know there's a poem moving around there, angular and modern, a kind of bauhaus cut-up; he's closer to it than I will ever be.
0 Comments
The BeachSo many questions in the salty
mist, whether love was love or just a wish, I sat under the umbrella, you strolled the beach oh how the sun did shine that day. Somewhere in time we did not agree. As the tide came and went, I imagined too you did dream, but way led to way, if we were meant to be that arcade window would not have lit your face, and I would have stumbled into you where castles are made and glimmers of light make rings. |
|