Nearly happy. Brilliantly lit –
That threshold of the great lake
Spilling its river. Naive pioneers,
We had no idea what we were seeing
When we watched the cut-throat beneath our boat,
Marching, massed, over the sunken threshold
Of the Yellowstone.
Petty precautions
To keep our skulls clear of the whizzing leads
Catapulted from the lashing rods
Of the holiday anglers – a cram of colour
Along the bank and the bridge – took all our forethought.
We did not see what infinite endowment
Leaned over that threshold, beckoning us
With that glitter of distance as it gathered
The trout into its bounty.
Little finesse,
With bumping leads and earthworms. No problem
Catching our limit dozen
Of those weary migrants, pushing and pushed
Towards their spawning gravels. What I remember
Is the sun’s dazzle – and your delight
Wandering off along the lake’s fringe
Towards the shag-headed wilderness
In your bikini. There you nearly
Stepped into America. You turned back,
And we turned away. That lake-mouth
Was only one of too many thresholds –
Every one of them a glittering offer.
We half-closed our eyes. Or held them wide
Like sleepwalkers while a voice on a tape,
Promising, directed us into a doorway
Difficult and dark. The voice urged on
Into an unlit maze of crying and loss.
What voice? ‘Find your souls,’ said the voice.
‘Find your true selves. This way. Search, search.’
The voice had never heard of the shining lake.
‘Find the core of the labyrinth.’ Why? What opens
At the heart of the maze? Is it the doorway
Into the perfected vision? Masterfully
The voice pushed us, hypnotized, bowing our heads
Into its dead-ends, its reversals,
Dreamy gropings, baffled ponderings,
Its monomaniac half-search, half-struggle,
Not for the future – not for any future –
Till it stopped. Was that the maze’s centre?
Where everything stopped? What lay there?
The voice held me there, by the scruff of the neck,
And bowed my head
Over the thing we had found. Your dead face.
Your dead lips, dry, pale. And your eyes
(As brown-bright, when I lifted the lids,
As when you gazed across that incandescence)
Unmoving and dead.