A piece of ice, broken ice
it is the hard clarity of the surfaces here,
the real ones, the mountains and the cliffs,
escarpments and caves, whose glacial substance
that material of myth and legend- that ice,
which crept over and stole the mountain tops
blanched them, and kept them as present
for her granddaughters, that ice
which glitter-gluts itself on the landscape-
crawls into my vision, unwanted as a snake,
sinks into my pupils, maps onto my dreaming.
the glacier is lying abeam to us now. Rapt,
in a long grey coat I trace the window, bus ambling,
figure the lapses of the sky as gaps in the glacier’s vision
spikes, blades, edges. these are the peaks that clothe its stretches
queering the sparkle to a dull glaze, scattered
with a scant frost, like some natural wrinkle-
steeping slopes that boil the sun’s heat to a shimmer,
lick up the light like a delicious meal, a place
so vast that its shadow is a being of its own.
this expanse whelms itself into belief, digs a depth in me,
ministers a coldness. it is perhaps
the glamoury of this place, this shimmering harness
of blue-let sky and glittering bay, that seems borderless,
this land that lived and breathed and needed no human
to be real, had no desire to be seen.
feel the levelling grains, formation of helter skelter rock,
ridges of fish bones crenulating the mass, packing the lumps
of bouldering stone, the mullion of this hard land
against a callous sky. the kind of ground that makes you fumble,
halfway away from a slip or an accident, always at the edge of a fall,
the land craving to knit rock and sinew, desires
a body to slump on its shores,
to offer itself to the bleak descent of the birds,
bones and bits of jaw strewn about the beach.
it is the hard clarity of the surfaces here,
the real ones, the mountains and the cliffs,
escarpments and caves, whose glacial substance
that material of myth and legend- that ice,
which crept over and stole the mountain tops
blanched them, and kept them as present
for her granddaughters, that ice
which glitter-gluts itself on the landscape-
crawls into my vision, unwanted as a snake,
sinks into my pupils, maps onto my dreaming.
the glacier is lying abeam to us now. Rapt,
in a long grey coat I trace the window, bus ambling,
figure the lapses of the sky as gaps in the glacier’s vision
spikes, blades, edges. these are the peaks that clothe its stretches
queering the sparkle to a dull glaze, scattered
with a scant frost, like some natural wrinkle-
steeping slopes that boil the sun’s heat to a shimmer,
lick up the light like a delicious meal, a place
so vast that its shadow is a being of its own.
this expanse whelms itself into belief, digs a depth in me,
ministers a coldness. it is perhaps
the glamoury of this place, this shimmering harness
of blue-let sky and glittering bay, that seems borderless,
this land that lived and breathed and needed no human
to be real, had no desire to be seen.
feel the levelling grains, formation of helter skelter rock,
ridges of fish bones crenulating the mass, packing the lumps
of bouldering stone, the mullion of this hard land
against a callous sky. the kind of ground that makes you fumble,
halfway away from a slip or an accident, always at the edge of a fall,
the land craving to knit rock and sinew, desires
a body to slump on its shores,
to offer itself to the bleak descent of the birds,
bones and bits of jaw strewn about the beach.
