The Ghent Review Volume1, Number 1, summer 2016 | Page 58
Secretly I unwind my spool and travel back and forth within the maze.
Secretly. Am beast and seeker. The one who knows that the way in is not
necessarily the way out. Yet I go deeper in so as not yet to go out.
Unwinding as I go a golden thread to defy the works of minotaur.
But brightness now about me. Nor darkness overtake me. Nor silence come
upon my mouth. Nor does my hand shake in trembling at the necessities of
the day. And if he saw me outside the library – what of it? His eyes can
never know my purpose nor the schemes to which I have set myself. Library:
I will write a fine page. I will have no gilded web about me but I will write a
fine page.
Now to my steps tempo my thoughts also. Am I already taking leave of
familiar sights and sounds while carrying their essence within me? If so it
will be so but there will be no silence. Nor gilded pages lure me from my
purpose. I will wri te a fine page.
See him and her but I do not want to see them. Pass on as if un-noticing
their gestures and not hearing their callings from the opposite side of the
street. Their gesture are not mine to recognise and respond to. Useless
words exchanged and the pleasantries gone through like a weekly ritual:
How are you today? Fine weather for a stroll. How is the work coming along?
Bah! I will have none of it. Only essentials. That’s what matters. All the rest
can flow away from me like useless water to a puddle.
Mud-water. Between the paving stones. Left-over’s from yesterday’s rain.
Their words and gestures also. Formalities I have neither time nor
inclination for. An embarrassment not to be responded to.
Gull and wave – sweet weaves of time as might be sung in a song (I will be
that singer).
The transubstantiating sea. And a gull’s arabesque-hail mystery of craft and
flight. Unto me be these things of the day.