Sunday, February 13, 2011

SIXTY NINE

She is growing up at number sixty nine....on the seventh floor....seventh heaven....left....left hand....right hand in hand....she leaves for school at seven forty five....at the crack of frosty winter dawn....to hold hands with Alba....and I watch....and I see it is stunning in its beauty....and not a thing does move....not a person does move....not a scraggy city dog does bark nor does a grubby black crow....grey city gull grumble its calling....and nothing does move except their fingers....sixteen fingers....four thumbs four eyes melt into each other....eyelids almost imperceptibly quivering....eyelashes....at fourteen....Alba....at twenty seven....eight on the dot....fourteen....I wonder if another part of her body is as beautiful as her....moist....silent....lips....thirty seconds later....and I watch....from bus shelter....number two one three....Alba and The Pretty Girl....and....although it is raining on frost not a raindrop does fall....black and blue....the sky is a still silent storm of newborn pearls....hanging on the fluttering of an eyelash....eight on the dot....and I gaze....and they are stunning in their beauty and it is not hard to understand....


“Hey, Peter! Have a look at this....the little cottages in the hills....the winter snow....”

And Alba shook up the little universe and it was snowing in those faraway mountains.

“....and we’re in there....look....the third cottage along....number sixty nine....the three of us warm and cosy in front of a raging fire....logs....toasting bread....butter and coarse cut bitter marmalade....”

“That tree’s a bit out of scale. With so much water in the mountains Alba, could the fire actually rage?”

“Jo....chica, por favor, oh no....has roto el hechizo....Peter! She’s broken the spell....”

And they kissed, but I was in one of the other universes, toying with an enormous clear glass paperweight I had picked up off the mantelpiece.

Trapped in its cool heaviness are thousands....of tiny air bubbles....the sky is a still silent storm of newborn pearls....hanging on the fluttering of an eyelid....eight on the dot....sixteen....and a half years old....and I gaze....and they are stunning in their beauty and it is not hard to understand....that Christmas it is not but, for our time, it is like that forever, forever our time, eight on the dot....I wonder no longer....It is....And that is that.

Sunday, February 06, 2011

THE FATHER’S LAMENT (REVELATION)

....fifteen....and a half....and there is half past five....and a half....and there is twenty four more....seven....sixteen fingers and four thumbs two tongues....and since she was twelve I have often wondered if another part of her body was as beautiful as her.... sleeping....moist....silent....lips....eyelids almost imperceptibly quivering....eyelashes....


....at fifteen....I demand the numbers....and a half....strangle out....suffocate the image of her....in the half light....behind the door left ajar....but the numbers....the words for the numbers....the letters for the words....they do not obey....do not drown out a poetry of leaden emptiness....fifteen....and a half....sixteen fingers four thumbs....two tongues recite me a silent poem of emptiness for a lost daughter....