How to keep....is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty.... from vanishing away?
No there’s none, there’s none. Oh no there’s none, nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair, do what you may do, what, do what you may, and wisdom is early to despair....
The Leaden Echo, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)
Street lights out, dark, dark night and the stars took my breath away. Tumbling brook, gutters in the street and I’m stumbling, clawing myself up the trunk of a dead skeletal looking tree onto my own two feet, tumbling back up the road, homeward bound, with any of the little luck left to me, so I hope, and now the stars are turned out because I can’t lift my head more than a few footsteps into the future because everything hurts so much, they could have done me a favour, gone a little further, but no one is left for dead, they got to see you up and running, shuffling, no one is left for dead.
So I stumble on and stumble into something and can’t control my bladder and wet myself, which doesn’t matter at all because I’ve only got on my muddy raincoat, nothing else, didn’t even bother to look for anything else, don’t care. Could be mud. Could be blood, could be diarrhea, couldn’t stop it when I eventually got the coat over my shoulders, I think I recall....could be all that stuff, street lights out, dark, dark night. Can’t see. So, anyway, I stop, close my swollen eyes and there she is, perhaps two and a half, three years old floating in a stone enameled kitchen sink. There she is, me, me being bathed by a fat old woman I can never put a face to, or a smell to, or a voice to, but the sink is off white and the water must be at blood temperature because I have no memory of it being hot or cold, but it’s kind of grayish and soapy, and sometimes I can remember the sound of a baby, of me, splashing, but, maybe not, since everything swims in and out of focus and I can only get a grip on what I’m remembering right this moment, so maybe I’m only remembering from last time I remembered my first ever memory of this, my one and only life. Two things are constant. I think two things are constant. On her right foot, on her right foot, my right foot there is a soaking wet sock and, to this day I can feel that soaking wet sock, if I try hard enough. This is my first ever memory. I say “is”, I think “is” because it’s never that exact, it’s been lived so often that it may never ever have happened, but no mind, it’s a memory all the same, part of the ever so colourful history of my life and, looking back, that would have been the time when my brother was born and mother was in the hospital with father smoking up the corridors with his Navy Cuts. So, that would put the stone sink in aunty Vi’s place, next door, and a little later aunty Vi turned out to be no aunty to me at all and aunts who aren’t aunts at all are all supposed to be slightly fat so the woman with no face is slightly fat too. The other thing that’s fairly constant is a sensation, a sensation of being goose pimply fresh and clean and the sock makes me feel even cleaner and goose pimply clean with its heavy sepia soddeness to compare the rest of my body with. Sodden, but I adore goose pimples....and suddenly someone, trespassing in my head says,
“You’re not dead yet Alba, open your eyes!”
Something told me to open my eyes and I, feeling I had no strength to do otherwise, so obedient I am, open my eyes and stumble and stagger on for a little while longer. Street lights out, dark, dark night and there is dirty water calmly singing in the gutters and I’m stumbling against the tide and everything hurts so much. Bubling Brook, Dingly Dell were in one of my storybooks from before the Alliance of Civilizations, weren’t they? Where the Goblins parked the cars they’d stolen from Toyland in the hollow under the roots of the biggest tree in the woods. It was there, wasn’t it? Years ago. How can I have so much blood? I have to keep rubbing something sticky from my eyes. Suppose it’s blood, there’s no rain. Don’t know if there are any clouds, can’t lift my head more than a few paces into the future because everything hurts so much and no one is left for dead. I’m nodding out.
I’m nodding out, so I close my eyes and stumble on and into some kind of metal post that I hug desperately to keep myself upright and I hug it with desperate gratitude, but gratitude does no good and so I slowly slip to the ground and I’m hugging metal with my forehead on a stinking curbstone. I can do no more. I can go no further than this little ring of light. This has to be the only lamppost with light in the whole town and there she is, older but no wiser, me, me on stage, on stage, black velvet drapes and black satins and silks strewn over the boards, spotlight brilliant, but icy cold, over my head, somewhere up there in the universe. And a curtain lifts and there, three years older, just eighteen, is the pretty girl. The prettiest girl. She is naked and shivering just slightly and her head is lowered in modesty but her eyes look up into mine demurely and she holds her hands, fingers lightly intertwined, in the small of her back, palms open for caresses and she is truly beautiful, truely gorgeous. I am naked too but my nakedness is somehow shameful in her light although she doesn’t seem to see it that way. I am with her and softly kiss her eyelids, the cold tip of her nose, her neck just under her pierced ears and the cool creases at the top of her arms and, as I do this I brush her breasts with my cheeks, her nipples with my thumbs. Then we embrace and make love in the spotlight in all the silks and velvet, we turn, slowly in the spotlight and she is shivering so slightly, so ecstatically I have to kiss every goose pimple, each and every one and I am clean and she is pure and we embrace, and I taste her mouth again and we’re in love and in lust, we embrace, but so exquisitely lightly because everything hurts a little too much and there is a tear in her eye, on her cheek, which I kiss away and she licks away the black tears in my brown eyes, sodden in nostalgia for what was and what is to come and we make love again on a black silk draped divan, but oh, so so incredibly gently because everything hurts so much and, just then, orgasm, a shooting pain, shooting stars, a tumbling brook, and I open my eyes to the stinking curbstone, my arms round a dog piss stained lamppost, street lights out on a dark, dark pain filled night. I let go. I let go of her, I let go of beauty and I let go and roll onto my back. Dark night. The universe takes my breath away. Again.
When I eventually get to my feet, heaving myself in slow motion up the fluted, anorexic body of the lamppost, I can no longer see the stars because I can’t lift my head or raise my eyes more than a few unsteady steps into the future. I stumble as I swing slightly round the post, lights out, and move on, heavily, against the tide in the gutter, no one is left for dead. No one is left for dead, just deserted. The street is deserted and, as I move along I get the impression that I’m causing some kind of wave and I sense all the windows closing as I approach and then, just as silently, opening as I pass, thousands of windows, from ground floor to top floor, from one semi detached to the next. Even the stars appear to turn off at my passing, but that’s probably all in my mind although I picture all the night time fauna hushing each other in awe and turning their backs in fear at the sound of my oncoming, uneven footsteps, whispering behind trembling fingers when I’ve passed by and it slowly dawns on me why no one is left for dead but, just at that moment of realization, I hear a sound that hasn’t hushed up at my approach and I tilt my head sideways a little and catch a glimpse, get my eyes raised just enough to see headlights somewhere in my future and a moment later there’s the unmistakable sound of an old diesel engine coming into my present, and my lips are opening and closing but no sound is coming out but my head is saying,
“Please, please don’t do that again, please, don’t hit me there again....”
I sink to my knees. I have my hands on my thighs, slipping to my knees. I’m sitting on my heels and I’m swaying backwards and forwards too, too much, and the back of my head hits the curb but I can feel no more pain so I just don’t care. Street lights out, dark, such a dark night, but the stars are bleached out in these headlights and there’s a smell of diesel fills my lungs. Shooting pain, shooting stars, tumbling brook,
“Please, please don’t do that again, please, don’t hit me there again....”
And I’m gone. The universe has taken my breath away.
No comments:
Post a Comment