Vanishing Point
1.
You’re right, I’m lost.
But it’s wrong to suppose
I’m lost by chance or accident.
I meant to follow your mindless
Shining path but somehow
Always chose another, not realising
You cannot walk two paths at once,
Or that each refusal brings you
Closer to nowhere.
But that’s okay.
To grow old is to be exiled.
The learned contours recede then vanish,
Days drift through horizonless light
And, somewhere in the wasteland,
A strange bird cries as twilight sifts
Like sad sweet dust into my eyes.
This being so, I wonder: how could I
Have chosen otherwise?
2.
Once again I’m neither here nor there,
But somewhere in between, immobilised
By a drench of thoughts, conversations,
The imprint left by other people’s lives
And, enclosing all, eclipsing all, the need
To try and make sense of the damage
These months have wrought.
But even that’s not it, not quite.
Infinitely soft, indeterminate, this feeling,
Massing like snow or coalescing
Like reflections in broken water,
Something to do with sunlight and the instant
Of the hummingbird’s silhouette,
The knife-sharpener's whistle as he goes
From street to street, the clouds of blue smoke
Drifting back from the taxi rank,
And rain, the music of rain on a zinc roof.
What is this feeling? What is it I hold in my hands?
Something like fear, like movement and its rest,
And the echoes, in this moment, the echoes
Of all the rest.
3.
In this light, none know me.
At this remove, I want nothing.
I feel no lack or urge to act
And I wish all well,
At this perfect distance
From everything.
