THE CASE (PART SEVEN), IN THE ALLEYWAY, 2

Thursday morning, twenty three minutes to ten….

In darkness, that which is withered gains perfection and is transformed. In the cold light of day scattered petals seem sad and pathetic, just fragments of a dream strewn about, with abandoned theatre tickets and programs and crisp and gum and sweet wrappers and sodden newspapers trodden underfoot by strangers, a discarded world in which, year by year, beauty is worn down and worn out and shrivels up to dust, and when, eventually, death rings its clarion call, the bones that were once the sacred untouchable walls of the Cathedral of the Language, the Factory of Words, only sing of silence.

Now there are songs of a silence like the roar of Atlantic winds rolling up and over seashore trees, shrouded in clouds of heavy green blue mist, Atlantic winds, and storms and driving rain from the distant horizon over there. Now there are songs of silent tears which are perfectly cut diamonds lost in frozen waterfalls.

Alba’s night-time sextant smiles at all the beauty in little things, the gold brass red, the red petal, The Naked Lady, the crimson red moon. The crimson red lip, once bitten, once bleeding, must still be kissed, again and again, even while another day dawns.

A dream lasts long enough to free a truth, free it, that is, until the truth is assassinated by the word. The thought is assassinated by words and the words tell Bug Eyed Peter, they echo around, up there in his Cathedral, they defended themselves and say, all innocence and pleading, “Do not take us too seriously, do not take all this rubbish too seriously!”

Convolution, I survey the surroundings, they smell of urine, sodden staleness. I survey the redbrick walls; the jagged glass parapet veneered a dried blood brown, a varied collection of dull earthen coloured bottles, some broken, dirtied by time to a smoky semitransparent rust, abandoned railway cutting electric smelling rusty dirt and stones, a few crumpled, faded looking Coke cans, temporarily brightened, by spots of rainfall, various torn up scraps of blue coloured paper, here and there a newspaper, torn pieces of newspaper, growing mould, a dustbin-lid full of oily water and little islands of dead insects lays not more than three feet from where I stand in the muddy passageway between two dilapidated four story London town houses converted into bedsits.

Down in the alleyway I am suffering from cold, wet, numb fingers. Scattered fragments of a letter rest tangled in the stump of a long leafless bush, the dry pieces, light blue in colour. Others drift slowly to and fro in a puddle, ink blurred and running slightly, and some, turning a yellow white colour, have become stuck in a patch of rotting vegetation about a foot behind my left shoe. These scraps of torn paper, letter and envelope as it turns out, I bend down and carefully collect up. A dustbin lid, full of oily water reflects a black London sky and a universe of colours not three feet away from where I crouch in the cold early morning sun. Beauty glows, hidden in little things.