Under a Grey Sky

Saying my farewells, ticking them off as if they were some sort of last rite that has to be performed..the sheer necessity of it dizzying, the anticipation of the final door closing leaves me slightly breathless. Walk past the South Bank under a grey sky (the best place to be alone, surrounded by joggers and the world rushing by). And wasn't this how it began....

Have to see Richter's transcendental painting again. Could sit in front of it for a while and allow it to mesmerize me and bring me back to stillness..the shimmering reflection of white light in a green world, light dissolving the cages...

I sit on a wooden bench dedicated to an "unknown husband" before the Thames and today, for some strange reason, it seems more like a sea than a river. Tranquil and becalming, a constancy to its movement that is reassuringly familiar. The waves never leaving their confines. The grey slowly slips and slides toward me. How we hunger for a crumb of meaning to our fate. I fumble in my coat pocket for the chestnut that I've kept there for the last five years. It's good to find things on the floor and keep them safe in dark places.

Monuments to every moment,

refuse of every moment, used:

cages for infinity

Marbles, buttons, thimbles, dice,

pins, stamps, and glass beads:

tales of the time

Memory weaves, unweaves the echoes

fire burned in the mirror

slot machines of vision,

condensation flash for conversation

the reflector of the inner eye

Scatters the spectacle

God all alone above an extinct world

The apparitions are manifest,

their bodies weigh less than light

lasting as long as this phrase lasts.

One final look at the second-hand books under the Embankment. I turn around as I walk away: no, the world hasn't collapsed, life goes on. An old lady leafs through a book, showing it to her world-weary husband: "no, this isn't just an ordinary fashion book, it tells you why..." I lose the thread..other people's lives aren't that interesting anyway.

On the bridge a beautiful Russian (or at least East European) woman asks me where to get a 'tour bus'.

Listen to Montserrat singing those sublime lullabies that are an island of peace amidst the flux. I move on to the bookshop, not expecting to find any solace in words. An hour to kill. As if we could! And there I hear old Leonard, singing this song...

And read these words:

I dreamed that dead, and meditating,

I lay upon a grave, or bed,

..In the cold heart, its final thought

stood frozen, drawn immense and clear,

stiff and idle as I was there;

and we remained unchanged together

for a year, a minute, an hour.

I raised my head. A slight young weed

had pushed up through the heart and its

green head was nodding on the breast.(All this was in the dark.)

..the graceful head

changed its position mysteriously,

since there was neither sun nor moon

to catch its young attention.

The rooted heart began to change

... and then it split apart

and from it broke a flood of water.

A few drops fell upon my face

and in my eyes, so I could see

(or, in that black place, thought I saw)

that each drop contained a light,

a small, illuminated scene;

the weed-deflected stream was made

itself of racing images.

(As if a river should carry all

the scenes that it had once reflected

shut in its waters, and not floating

on momentary surfaces.)

The weed stood in the severed heart.

"What are you doing there?" I asked.

.."I grow," it said,

"but to divide your heart again."

Elizabeth Bishop