To write something beautiful.
To open a gate to where
my childood still waits for me
in sheepskin mittens,
gathering all the people in the world
to his small breast,
and holding them to him, expectantly, there.

Is he gazing at the snow: is it 1963?
My father — my splendid father —
in galoshes, working with a shovel
to clear the path:
he writes something beautiful.

The troll who loiters in the shadows
cannot come closer while my father works:
that wild one, he waits for the glimmers at twilight,
when dreams begin to swell
and Jack Frost scoots from window to window
only moving when we are blinking
so that we don't see him — not ever.

He must move more quickly than a thought —
even the one
which connects lightning with spiders.
Sometimes, I don't want to sleep,
but to stay awake in my life
for one more hour,
to wring from my smoky eyes
one more moment of you —
and then another.

To write something beautiful.
To extend, into the darkness, my hand:
to touch your face,
and feel my loneliness
against your skin, to feel your lips
moving softly, your lips and no other,
specific and gentle and unrepeatable, to caress
that opening mouth which holds
all the secrets of the world
in the fuzzy, unadorned labour
of a struggling mother.

Is it 2001? — I'm looking at stormclouds.
You come close to me, brush against me,
I feel the distance between us
glow, and move, prickle like pine needles, deepen, and then
open as you stand before me so clearly
as if there is not one
iota of me in my seeing
and a path has been made lucid
for you to move upon,
being someone beautiful.

Then the world grows cloudy and lyrical,
beset with tensions, spotted with peace,
and we feel like we are ambassadors
as are all lovers
sent out
from a disturbed country
and an unknown people,
the boat beached and your hand
parting the pine branches, extending, into the darkness
our lit bodies, feeling as they
have never been before,
slipping down and away from the submarine mirrors
of a strangers' room, bearing
with seasalt footsteps through the sand and shells
the representation of man.

And who will receive us in that place
but other lovers, speaking caresses
in another tongue?
This is the embassy
of late buses and trains, the formality
pauses and delays between awe-struck young lips
make of a ferrous and a bone-laden world,
turning it to scriptures
beginning will always adore
and let fall, suddenly, blindly, kiss-struck and a shooting star
melting over the night sky
above Sanur,
the universe up on tip-toes,
and its mouth open
about to say… 'Oh!'…

To write something beautiful.
To look into your eyes, to hold, between my hands
all the gentleness I can bear
of your face;
to tilt your chin, to turn your mouth to where
deep in the eye of the calm
of the whorling storm's black
core of my eyes
a boy in a lambswool hat
chases his spooky breath
in Dorset, as my handsome father —
far more handsome than Lawrence of Arabia! —
works with a spade of steel
to shift off the drifts
and the compiled crystal layers
which are blocking the way.

It is not that the snow is ugly,
it is just that my father must clear it
to open the path
for my mother,
so she may call out
that it is time to come in now
from the troll-haunted shadows Jack
Frost glimmers between, leaving only
the glistening echoes of his movements
frozen through ferns, in forests of white quiet:
he writes something beautiful.

And my mother must roll and turn aside
the blood of her labour —
my frail, stupendous mother
Hercules idles beside, looking ashamed:
it is not that
her agony is easy — far from it —
but that she must sign off our umbilicus
in a milky emptiness
where birth and loss are one:
she writes something beautiful.

I come to you because
I cannot sleep, Marlboro and the fingers
of hands which have held psalms, and held
those poor hands, palm to palm, where on the back
the veins went brittle,
now the air mélanges spring and green difficult passages
and the dumb surges and rollers of the 11.15
taking me late at night from the city, glancing up for a moment,
someone with a book in a hazy, travelling mirror
as in two minds I Shakespeare and you
rising above the shouting waves
where Sebastian and Viola went drowning,
you always drifting into my thoughts, my thoughts
always returning to you, my finer thoughts
still open like my eyes and as my words
still reach into the sands
of a salt, realising Illyria
reborn from the storm as from an angry, turbulent chrysalis
as a kind of survivor,
as a kind of ambassador.

And the walls
of all our houses grow insubstantial,
it's Michael singing, and he asks
if his eyes look empty, he says
he's forgotten how this feels —
to write something beautiful.

Did you think
I would forget you
when you and you alone
stand upon the path which blisses out
the cold-shouldered snow and the pelting light
of a falling star
I still reach for, and hold upon my hand
when I turn to kiss you: all melts,
and the walls of all our houses
grow insubstantial
for Michael's singing.

I still believe
in both the lion and the lamb.
I did not let go. And if we,
if we could remain awake
for one more hour,
if I could wrest
from my fatigue
one more moment of you,
we could stay up, late, into the dawn
and catch a glimpse
of Jack Frost alighting
from the steps of his carriage, rig
confected from icicles, points of dazzle, shimmering
in the fir-blue shadows
under the pines
before morning
turns all to substantial fire
erasing something beautiful.

Did you think
I did not love you?
No. Sleep will burn away
this day's falls,
but I will try once more
to be your ambassador,
to represent you
through this shining dark,
through this work of a man:
to write something beautiful
I must clear away
all the other phrases —
it is not that they are ugly, far from it,
but only
that this is the phrase
which brings me to you.

And all the people,
all the people in the world,
I'll gather them to me,
clasp them in my arms,
against my small breast,
to write something beautiful
I only have to hold them, here, close, tender,
struggling
to my word.

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.

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