Two Poems
trees, sun, fishes
there are lakes with steely surfaces
under them dart small swift fish precipitous
intent upon the piscine –
if i were there, if i went out,
surely i could drown in fishy confusion;
the morning sun smiles now docile behind the curtains
slyly belying her massive power
but proudly life-giving –
if i were there, if i went out,
surely i could worship the essence of the solar;
trees stretch enamoured to that same loving sun
humming vegetable intensity under their drowsy contentment
these trees i dream of
if i were there, if i went out,
surely dreams could dance in the glorious arboreous;
but curtains define a secure locus of containment
luscious security exquisitely invisible –
trees, sun, fishes
if they were here, if they came in,
surely they would expose me to dangerous invasion;
so i let them go, naked in their essential natures -
the lesser of two evils, i'm really not complaining.
some little girl, dead in france, 1348
we traced the minutes entrained between each passing second written large across the unsmiling face of night, a heaven smaller than the space between the smallest god's eyebrows, and you said "why don't we steal an hour from some particular thursday in 1974? some memory, some sorrow, some joy, something from your registered life?" i said that sorry, hours fell across the tracks of esurient oblivion like the tears of a child forgotten years ago and not recorded in history's pages, the child not even honoured with a footnote, you know, the little girl who had some disease in 1348 in france and at this point in his listeningly reading the theodicising theologian embarrassed swallowed his gulp of calmly brandy and stroked the cigar he used to compensate his lost erection, the one he misplaced somewhere between Aquinas' pages, his disgrace, his poor unlovable face. and you remained the reason, the stalwart stanchion that is my last bulwark in the face of that one last good night, the one that that little girl presumably, and she probably existed, slid into unashamed and innocent as the angel that she unfortunately never became, died just like that so softly between an ave maria and a pained cough and general poor hygiene, all life's dismal despite. and despite the failure of theodicy that dog, that nobodaddy, that god, is unassailable in his irreproachable nonentity. no one to blame for god is not; and that little girl's so young, so untimely, dying and lying somewhere unloved, forgotten, is all the rage and pain and sorrow in the universe. and all that matters now to prepare for is that one day you and i shall look one another in the unwinking eye and remember her forever.
DAVID MCLEAN – Born in Wales in 1960, though he has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives in a large flat with his fiancée and five cats. He has worked for a solicitor’s firm in London in the eighties and with health care and teaching in Sweden.
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