there’s no Eden anyway
audio outward bound
the rainbow
1
The light isn’t easy to describe,
it makes me think of a jeweller’s work:
is it true light, or some artifice of light
shining in this quiet garden
from a hidden source?
Yes quiet,
it has taken us very long to find
the mercy of quiet
here in this country that was once called the homeland of horses
where the past is still alive.
It is an edge-place, a membrane
a threshold dividing one region from another,
and that must be the reason for the unbelonging iridescent light.
2
Because we have arrived at last
because of where we came from
you can sleep now
and I will stay with you while you sleep.
I have learned about you on the journey:
you have the heart of a father
but how worried even your drowsy face is.
I would take the burden from you if I could.
Cast off into the weightlessness of the dream’s dark water:
drift, while above your searching eyes
appear not constellations but a life necklace of cameos
which aren’t exactly memories
because, strange to say,
if angles of truth and feeling intersect at a yielding point
on the curve of recollection
what already happened can after the fact change.
Look up again:
watch the one you loved who was sent away
be able by this magic of reform
to turn back and for a moment or forever,
without a sound, as in a mime, be comforted.
It is worth all the miles of our escape
to have reached this outpost
beyond which nature’s pattern begins to blur
and the past is flexible
under an alchemical sky.
3
Afterwards the current is slower
the shape of land emerges
with huge bodies looming dimly on the shore
until, as soon as it is shallow enough to stand,
you smell the almost choking equine musk
which overpowers every other sense.
You have the heart of a father
but you must walk among these creatures like a child.
Go then with all your hope and hunger:
they are letting you enter the lawless cauldron of the herd
its furnace of being and becoming,
and though the shadows lengthen
I will wait for you.