the suspension of time

There is no time for Schubert now. No time for the 'whole thing'. Give me a snatch of it, a quick fix, the gist, the essence, a shard, the express note, a few choice fragments, a thirty-second trailer, crystalline pure, without any ads, give me the last word, the shining truth free from the dross; cut me some slack, fasten the knot, sock it to me. What's the dope, Schube? Cut to the chase, lay it on me, and keep it real. No more diversions, just the one thing necessary. Cut it out, paste the relevant bits. Let me scroll down, fast-forward to the relevant part. My blood-shot eyes can't fix on anything, like a junkie's, and I haven't got enough silence in me to hear the music. Bring it to the surface, on the double, lay your cards there for all to see (more jokers?). Like a hooker, you've gotta catch our attention. There's a lot of people out there, putting it about.

I'll name that tune in one. The first note that folds all the hidden ones into it. As if all of human history were contained in our origins, in the Fall, waiting to be played out. The poetry, the prose, the poetry of everyday life. Don't talk about eternity or the cosmos. Just a few bright steps under grey skies is all we ask for.

~~~

You walk across the field, like a sleepwalker, past the library with its upper windows dark, austere and sombre, keeping the books cool and relaxed in the shade. You walk in the grass which hasn't been cut because of the austerity drive. It's thickness is uneven; up to your toes and sometimes your ankle, lush and soft and heavy. On the cement outer perimeter new students filter by aimlessly, being initiated in to the useless and pointless. I try to see myself through their eyes. Books held in peasant hands, lost in thought, dreamy eyes, time on his hands, a cheap grey and black bag slung over his shoulder, a receding hairline, drying skin, no greatness in his features or gestures , the walk of a condemned man or, less dramatically, of someone who isn't free, who doesn't carry any music with him. Very few graces or inner refinement, a dull understanding of life-despite, or because of the books. He laughs too much to be clever and eats too much to be wise. In his stride he doesn't exhibit the confidence of a believer. Riddled with light and shadow.

~~~

I stop in my tracks to note a very large, giant mushroom growing in the middle of the field. What is the inner life of a mushroom? A mushroom is all exterior: light brown, smooth and woody, breathing quietly in the grass, ticking with the pulse of  watch's second hand. There are no others around. But why here? Totally unscripted, unalysable, a form of resistance to our understanding. Calvino's Marcovaldo springs to mind.

In the evening darkness in a place outside New York, a viewpoint point where
             one single glance will encompass the homes of eight million
             people.
The giant city over there is a long shimmering drift, a spiral galaxy seen
            from the side.
Within the galaxy coffee-cups are pushed across the counter, the shop
           windows beg from passers-by, a flurry of shoes leave no prints.
The climbing fire escapes, the lift doors glide shut, behind  police -
locked doors  a perpetual seethe of voices.
Slouched bodies doze in subway cars, the hurtling catacombs.
I know too – without statistics – that right now Schubert is being played
in some room over there and that for someone the notes are
more real than anything else.

II

The endless expanses of the human brain are crumpled to the size of a fist.
In April the swallow returns to last year’s nest under the guttering of this
             very barn in this very parish.
She flies from Transvaal, passes the equator, flies for six weeks over two
continents, makes for precisely this vanishing dot in the land-
             mass.
And the man who catches the signals from a whole life in a few ordinary
            chords for five strings,
who makes a river flow through the eye of a needle,
is a stout young gentleman from Vienna known to his friends as `The
Mushroom," who slept with his glasses on
and stood at his writing desk punctually of a morning.
And then the wonderful centipedes of his manuscript were set in motion.

III

The string quintet is playing. I walk home through warm forests with the
             ground springy under me,
curl up like an embryo, fall asleep, roll weightless into the future, suddenly
            feel that the plants have thoughts.

IV

So much we have to trust, simply to live through our daily day without
           Sinking through the earth!
Trust the piled snow clinging to the mountain slope above the village.
Trust the promises of silence and the smile of understanding, trust that
           the accident telegram isn’t for us and that the sudden axe-blow
           from within won’t come.
Trust the axles that carry us on the highway in the middle of the three
           hundred times life-size bee swarm of steel.
But none of that is really worth our confidence.
The five strings say we can trust something else. And they keep us  com-
           pany part of the way .
As when the time-switch clicks off in the stairwell and the fingers –
          trustingly – follow the blind handrail that finds its way in the
          darkness.

V