Undying

 Undying

 

When you and I were infants,

in lands lost to us now,

places so far distant,

we must have been beguiled –

 

We stared through kaleidoscopes

at the world’s patterns,

twisting the lens

with mitten hands,

mastering only enough numbers

to join dots into mazes,

knowing just enough words

to see blots on pages,

balancing wooden blocks

to construct tumbled follies

and forcing jigsaw pieces

between cardboard creases

into senseless mosaics

to lay with a witching image.

 

Some babes are found

after the wolf has blown down

their straws and sticks

in nobody’s arms,

outside the pages of any fiction

undying in the New Forest,

without stolen porridge

or bed to rest,

with no loaves to break,

or fish to bless -

not in the woods

not by the riverbank

 

and if your cradle tumbled, sank,

then wish for a broomstick,

and grip tight to the branch -

follow the trail

of breadcrumbs here.

 

The animals went in two by two,

and if I wasn’t holding your hand,

then it was someone like you,

when Abbey bells pealed,

our open classroom door revealed,

a cavern, dark, heavy scented in cloud

we could not quite understand,

but somehow sense and feel.

 

He is black robed, beckoning -

this kindly ancient seer within,

chaunting words, singing hymns,

that we must learn by rote,

and how we listened, never spoke,

except in call and response -

give us daily bread we plead

and he will. His words are seed

to scatter onto ploughed lands

in the lea of purple headed mountains

and afterwards we held out our hands

for apples from the teacher.

 

These words he preaches:

He will come back.

He can come back.

But only if you believe

in the hopelessness of grief,

for death is no thief,

he does not trespass against us - forgive,

and what has passed beyond can live -

we can roll away weighty stone

unstopper the tomb,

bring light into your darkest rooms,

return triumphant

from her swollen womb.

 

You say it’s pointless

to repeat such myths to you today,

as uncomfortable hassocks

are only fit to cripple your knees,

and no such whispered words

live upon the breeze

once love is cut

it is deceased -

yet his stories echo everywhere,

over the hills and far away -

it’s true that once you did believe.

 

Give us our daily bread, we plead,

in dawns that dazzle after dark,

in doves visiting olives to Noah’s Ark,

in sunshine blooming after rain,

we must shake off drops that do remain –

so that I may one day put my hands again

in warmth about your waist,

attire myself in those old black seer’s robes;

bargain with undying Time to unflow

and return us both to lost lands -

ever find me, counting days in threes,

searching ghosts, sowing seeds.