STO NEY andrew mccallum
PAT H WORDS
the moorland
the best of places uncultivated pure this silver-grey landscape
[where] limestone weathers pastures petrify stone crumbles unpossessed abandoned
a place unhistoried unessenced a place inhuman a silence without centre water-scarred overhung by dark crumbling banks life-lingered its constituents the molecular dead
[that] inherits the soil intensifies the yellow of the starlike flowers the paleness of the turf
atoms scattered here
[and]
there which time erodes abrades erases death [which] in the aftermath of talk our peculiar power holds back
[with] its inner logic its consonance
[which] its sounds fragment
coming to little sparta
past moorland pastures burnt in the sun on a stoney path between desiccate whins above the barrel-hoops of christian streets up the bare slope of sense and memory burning poisonous white in the afternoon limepit [of] action hopes desires white abyss [of] the inward of an eye that seethes on nothing burning the flesh burning the mind to the city sterile on its hill its blind houses looking back [at] the white abyss the the vast stifling of a civilisation the future naked without consolation only the burning bonfire only fuel [and] the mephitic perfumes of decomposition the wild slack beauty of corruption white fires white banners blowing we little spartans come living fires men and women flesh mind spirit and are not defeated [nor] consumed
paths
what is there you do not doubt the self the line of meanings taught you knee-high the purposes
these paths may take us
who knows where despite all mapped symbols to air of gold [and] pine-filled resin dark and green unsure a siren-space where men may be unlimned a pond which holds no grail beneath its surface a random walk whose curious landmarks impress our minds [with] the unbounded the unpurposed doubt's certain centre
these paths
do not end do not own/divide
no possession is implied by your walking no knowledge [of] what you walk from promised [or] what you hope unpromised these paths care for no betrayal dark (where a bird unseen softly calls) [or] riven with light edge-brighteningpaths yet to be trodden
ian
he plays through all these forms silently
he rests in all these forms [and] is fettered
formless in form alone
he finds himself willing himself
in all forms he finds his freedom
free of our prison he weds himself to being
endlessly being he reveals himself
through all these forms (of which we would be free) in this bondage that constrains us he is the spirit of the head that is severed
where he sings no time passes
he is bran orpheus siva
through all these forms silently he plays
the garden
keeper of fire in the dark remembered places of the soul in the depths of the mind beyond all gods transients of feeling mystic names [where] meaning glimmers out of such grace our naming and our touching such life such beauty comes what in us [is] source inception the bright fires of feeling voiceless flames the consonance [from which our being] comes our shadows beyond us in the past
green man
behind the leaves man-in-nature stands staring from living stone resists remains our knowing [and]
in mouths that strain in leaves that coil curve
the singing flute marsyas god of headlands and millennial light heavy from his journey god of masks that say god is not love but only presence a waiting in the moment of the air heavy-leavedorpheus of the foliate crown oak laurel birch black poplar king of the dark slave of this murmuring wood janus bi-face who arrests the mind with terror and pity what is between an age that lives by vision and this age
what tongue moves in the severed head
dusk
the sun sinks slowly beneath the world a white moon rises alive in the pale sky beyond the burning cloud returning us to the first freedom the first exquisite freedom of the earth where poise matters and affection the dimension where our lives began
now we can be tender with all our knowing now we can love the earth as it has never before been loved as the first men loved before knowledge as the first women loved before possession their spirits alive in the dry grass ocean before we owned the earth time each other no more greatness the past not delimiting the future not unfolding just waiting for the flame of life till it comes again just waiting
sky
like the sky mind's outer echo the exterior mirror over the glass of which thought passes silent without intention clear
dawn
pentland of light staring out across the empty moorland being without knowing mirrors without reflection pentlands of dawn silent under morning above the white dew of our footsteps
the gardener
man is the gardener now
he dreams the cold fountains and frozen streams the stone grass the ice earth the statues
there are figures
here with inscrutable faces the blind-man's-buffof movement beneath the crystal clarion brilliance where we are most at home
the garden
the gush of air and light on the high moorland makes the tussocks sigh greenly together like a bent rowers with the sky on their backs rowing through the depths of the land through time space roars but come down to the garden's spartan silence... it is like leafing through an artist’s notebook and coming across drawings of human figures on paths of light flickering among trees where at last individuals walk and talk and the silence waits for time to flow
light
the world
is flickering is still
what we meditate upon becomes an image of our own existence
we move
around the garden rememberingwhat is loved having
no observer no desire
free of time's claims and obligations in
a place beyond what movement teaches a place
of light of light's delirium of the fall of light
on walls on leaves on paths where colours
pass like humble gods ensnare the eye
then
terror time and the earth shifts under our feet courage is to be
our own firmness a pillar of fire a gardener to be
one more or less in the cage of history
but
also
a voice a mind a pair of eyes
night
the stillness behind the moon lifts up the hills tongues press greenly on the word
the white foam of the milky way is the minotaur's spine emerging
the unbreathing night is darker than a stone what is this beating in the cage of bone? a heart a round white mouth forever searching
attend
respect
them our animal eyes where we are
see now
*there* the nothingness flower that contains us
acknowledge how stillness invades what ian made consider
attend
the garden now