Stoneypath

Page 1

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


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