I
The day turns holy as though a god moved through it,
wanderingly, unknowing and unknown,
led by the sky as a child is led by its mother.
But the sky of an island is a wandering sky.
It seems bewildered sometimes, it seems bewildered as we are
since the loss of our island.
Oh, yes, we’ve lost our island.
Time took it from us,
snatched it out of our hands as a fresh runner snatches
out of a spent runner’s hand
the bit of white cloth to continue.
Still
we live on the island, but more as visitors,
than as residents, now.
Still we remember
things our island has taught us: how to let the sky go
(as a bit of white cloth to continue)
and other things of a smaller, more intimate nature.
Our island has been a school in which we were backward pupils
but, finally, learning a little, such as:
lies die, but truth doesn’t live except in the truth of our island
which is a truth that wanders, led by the sky
as a child is led by its mother, and the sky wanders, too.
II
I dreamed one night without sleeping that when I returned,
that night, to a northern island,
you put on the clothes of a god which was your naked body
and moved from window to window in a room made of
windows, drawing, closing the curtains, your back
turned to me, showing no sign that you knew that you were
building an island: then came to rest, fleshed
in a god’s perfection beside me.
Even then,
I knew that to build an island is not to hold it always, but longing was so much stronger, yes, even stronger
than the dread of not holding, always.
Perhaps it would have been better if I had touched only your hand,
or only leaned over your head and clasped it all the night through.
But longing was so much stronger . . . .
III
Our travels ranged wide of our island but nowhere nearly so far
as our silence now enters the bare and mountainous country
of what cannot be spoken.
When we speak to each other
we speak of things that mean nothing of what we meant to each other.
Small things
gather about us as if to shield our vision from a wide landscape
untouched by the sun and yet blindingly lighted.
We say small things to each other
in quiet, tired voices, hoarsened as if by shouting across a great distance.
We say small things to each other carefully, politely,
such as:
Here’s the newspaper, which part of it do you want?
Oh, I don’t care, any part but the funnies or ads . . . .
But under the silence of what we say to each other,
is the much more articulate silence of what we don’t say to each other,
a storm of things unspoken,
coiled, reserved, appointed,
ticking away like a clock attached to a time-bomb:
crash, fire, demolition
wound up in the quietly,
almost tenderly,
small, familiar things spoken.
IV
Do you remember, as I do,
that in the temple of the Emerald Buddha in Bangkok,
there was, near the entrance,
a table bearing a laughable assortment of western gadgets, such as:
a portable radio called Zenith,
an electric razor called Sunbeam,
an alarm-clock called Little Ben that was actually ticking?
And as for the Emerald Buddha, both of us thought him disconcertingly small,
not glittering but glazed,
and he was just sitting there to be visited and observed by travelers
tired of travel, tourists tired of touring.
It was the long, slow, golden-hazed boat trip
through the canals of Bangkok
that gave us a sense of reverence for something:
the shacks on stilts of bamboo, the ancient women, breasts drooping,
bathing their grandsons in the warm tawny water as if paying them homage
as loving as it was humble: this, only this,
spoke to us of the limitless range and simplicity of a god, just
this, not the Emerald Buddha in his funnily tacky pavilion. . . .
The water of islands and the sky of islands
are what draw back to us
the visiting god that wanders, unable to speak any language
but that of stillness and radiance outside our windows.
Later, all dims, and nothing is asked past our measure;
the evening of our island
is simple as the question: What shall we have for supper?
and the answer: What would you like for supper?
In voices turned softer by love’s exhaustion and hate’s.
A true god’s image, unless it is drawn by a god,
(and I doubt that they pose for each other)
is better drawn in such quick, light pencil-scratches. . . .