Two
by Glyn
Maxwell
SOUTH-EAST
OF EDEN
Together
they took the least space they could.
Entered
each other deeply, to be less,
to
throw one shadow only, to be still
for
all the world while moving for each other.
So
space, so barely dented, might not bruise
and
cry, and time come running. This was why
their
breaths were held inside till the only end
of
that -- this side of nothing -- the great sigh
that
gives the place away . . .
And
out they come,
exiting
one another with the kiss
to
heal the bruise and be the bruise and there
they
sit. The only angel in this case
came
only there to point them, in their first
amazing
silence, to two peaceful desks.
BIRTHPLACE
Hard
to remember, now there is nothing here,
that
there was once nothing here. Hard to remember
they
paused in a field with a plot for a field and a feel
of
a place in mind and a little know of horses
faraway
in a corner stood there
pretty
much where that kittle knot of horses
stands.
The railway ran through the white template,
the
life and death of it, made east and west
of
nowhere. North and south it left itself
whichever
way one looked.
Hard
to remember now that it's all begun
that
it all began and, now that it's all over,
hard
to recall it's gone. Those who are gone
arrive
in a crest of steam and the late-lamented
help
them with their boxes.
Those
to the east have a shed and those to the west
a
greenhouse, it was a field and not a field
hereafter,
it was a path through new houses
and
a sweetship. There was a lane and another lane
which,
crossing it, was obliged
to
name what it was named and the five things
needed
they built buildings for. A meadow
reared
its set of gardens like farm-children
edging behind houses to belong there,
edging behind houses to belong there,
to
cluster and imagine
a
gate that is always shut will be always open.
But
for now the horizon was sky and a blackberry hedge
and
the north was the nettle-bed, and the south the roses
and
the east and archway to those sad allotments,
and
the west a banded twilight
as
out they build, in the time a bedtime story
takes
to ferry me shipshape to tomorrow;
out
they build till I wake and the horizon's
gone.
It won't be found until it's wept to
on
a holiday. The town
is
mine, this side of town is mine, the homes
go
strolling by, then, bowing out of sight
they
scurry round the world to be back in time
for
when I pass, as if they never budged,
and
a chuckle of wood-chimes
From Glyn Maxwell, Pluto, 2013.
