237

Et quoi de toutes nos œuvres?
Dit-il doucement dans l'obscurité.
L'ombre a brisé, et foudre est venu,
Sautant par-dessus lui-même, et
Dans la lumière l'obscurité a parlé.
Mais ce n'était pas du tout un langue.
Si c'était même vraiment une voix,
C'était malfaisant et insensé,
Et il a regrimpé vers le bas
Du vallée sacré. Il a chanté son
Enfant à dormir, et il a retourné
A ses œuvres. Tonnerre a sonné.

236

Nous s'allonger, regardant
Tandis les formes passent
Par les chevrons peints
De notre petit univers,
La lampe derriere nous,
Nos yeux dans l'ombre.
Tandis le tungstène chante,
Les formes défilent
En mouvement diurne
Contre le terre tournant.
Dans l'ouest, mourant,
Dans l'est, en train de naître,
Ces icônes de la vie
Évoquent notre soleil.
Au-dedans l'ampoule du
Lampe, tout est un.
La vie est pas une ombre,
C'est une lumiere fugitive.

235

Le vieux s'agenouilla à le foyer,
Empalant les jointures de bois gris
Avec un tisonnier. Lumière jailli,
Une machôire de flamme se levait 
À la brique de la foyer, se tordait,
Couvait, et se retirait. Cendres est
Tombé dans la main de l'enfant.
Fagots a eclaté vers l'interieur avec 
Un rugir et une fragile lumière
S'épanouissait dans le brûlé épave.

La lumière est l'enfant de le feu
Et n'est pas le feu, l'homme a dit.
Lumière est le fantôme de ce qu'on
Ne vois. Feu est la mort de bois,
Et c'est une chose ancien et étoilée,
Et c'est lente. Tu vois? Et il passa
Sa main entièrement grâce le feu.

Sur les arbres sous le colline, illuminé
Par les étoiles, un vent coloré souffla.

234

Une fois Dewey a trouvé un
Lapin mort en l'herbe longue à
L'arrière de la maison, se couchant
Comme si il a eu tombé endormi
Dans la nuit. C'était un Samedi
Matin. Sa fourrure etait lissé
De rosée, et l'herbe autour où
Il se couchait a été bleu et tout
Enfilées des lumières humides.
Les gouttes étaient astres du jour.
Dewey l'a regardé, debout, dans
Une vieilles chemise blanche qui
Etait comme une robe sur lui, sur
Son corps léger. Un fantôme blond.
Le lapin était cassé à la cou. Taches
Sombres dans l'herbe, et les yeux
Étaient vacants et sans couleur.

Le feu qui a été dans le lapin a
Divisé et incendiée l'herbe autour.
Sa force a bondi dans l'air, et a
Répandu en archipels de lumière.

233

For some minutes the image of the
White room and the peeling paint
Remained to me, held in place by
A nebulous and disconcerting sense
That somehow the train and its
Passengers were only a continuation
Of my dream, that at any time
            I might wake anew and find
Myself somewhere else altogether,
For instance at home in my bed.
Of the preceding events that passed
Before me in sleep I retained only
Fragments : their order had become
    Confused and their vitality gone.
I remembered the darkness and the
Movement of lights and great sounds,
But I could not hear or see them
Any longer, they were now no more
Than ideas to me. I felt this as a loss.
I began suddenly to think of my
Brother, but it was impossible to
Determine if this thought had come
Out of some forgotten part of the
Dream, or from a submerged idea
Of him in my mind, or from some
Other far place without coordinate.
The longer I looked the fainter the
Images of the dream grew, until
    I remembered only the white room.
Smoke rose above passing silhouettes
Of buildings, lit yellow and ringed
            With a periphery of weak stars.

232

  A voice spoke : I will carry you
From the dark. Evening has come.
   It is not good to sleep so long.

I opened my eyes and saw that
Night had fallen upon the carriage.
They had turned on the lights :
A soft glow from behind acetate.
Streetlamps swept their rays over
The interior walls, over the faces
Of newly embarked passengers.
A string of saliva connected the
Lapel of my jacket to my lower lip,
And below the lip a crust where
Some had dried. I wiped it away,
Gently. I could smell sleep in my
Hair, and feel my own breathing,
Soft and heavy, and the clatter
Of the train passing over the earth
Was like a meditation. I looked
About me, and then out into the
Dark beyond the window. Forms

Of houses and their dim curtains

Rose from the pools of streetlight.
A prodigy of the train's interior 
Was borne out into the night. Our
Pale images hung in the dark like 
Ghosts. I thought about my dream.

231

    Once my eyes had adjusted to
The unadulterated light by which
They had suddenly been struck,
I was able to distinguish rows of
Halogen bulbs hung in the space
    Above my head, all encased in
Sheaths of thin metal, arranged
In series. I found myself in a
Room of some size, devoid of any
Furnishings other than the lights
Overhead. The walls were identical
Edifices covered in a white paint
That had decayed and fallen away
    In many places, revealing dark
And indeterminate openings that
Were like wounds in the side of
A gigantic and indifferent animal.
The floor was tiled, also in white,
And at some distance from me lay
   An area laced with fine cracks
As if a heavy object had fallen there.
The room was entirely silent, and
As I moved closer to the nearest
Wall my footfalls did not sound.
I came upon a door that appeared
   To have rusted into a recess in
The crumbling paintwork. When I
Tried the handle it gave on an
Obscure space. As I strained to see
Through it, I felt myself waking.

230

I realised at once that the little
        Lights were stars, and that as
They grew faint with distance
They were falling into the old forms
Of constellations. Some of the lights
Split or collided and left clouds
        Of gas that coalesced softly of
Themselves, and flashes of white
Occurred at intervals sending out
Darker matter among the trajectories
Of the brighter bodies. The furthest
        Pilgrims seemed to gain in their
Momentum as they receded, and at
The limits of my sight these stars
Began to wheel and pirouette upon
Unseen axes : as more fled into
        The lightless outer field a havoc
Of agitated motion grew there and
It was as if a silent will had lit
Dancing fires at the boundary of the
Heavens. There was a groaning
        Sound like the chassis of a great
Vehicle being demolished : a fury
Of evacuation in which the cries
Of saxophones and dying blasts
Upon the organ could be heard.
        Suddenly the stars were put out,
And all flooded with blinding light.

229

    As light continued to pour from
    Orifices rent in the darkness,
Blooming like a pale flower or the
Outflung corpus of a vast, ghostly
    Zooplankton in the deep ocean,
Odours began to rise up to me
    That seemed to communicate
Inarticulate parts of my past self :
The fester of desiccated geraniums,
Rotten apples crushed into soil,
    The smell of hay beneath the
Bodies of sleeping animals, the
Discharge in the air after a rain :
    The odours of my hot breath
Sharp in the air before me as I
Woke in the night, and returned
Into sleep : the commingling of oil
And woodsmoke and dust with the
    Reek of feces, with the effluvia of
Violet and magnolia and hyacinth :
A soft taste of grey morning air.

The milk-white particles spread
As if across a river in the night,
And it seemed that a heavy wind
Came over the lights so that they
Nodded in place like paper lanterns.
       An ache flowered in my ribcage.

228

Light flooded from the punctures in
The barrier, a mass that seemed at
First made of particles conjoined as
In a nucleus : as the mass fed itself
Into the darkness it spread slowly
    As into a solution, and what had
Been a stream began to dissipate
In fragments that careened outward
In every direction, as if of their own
Volition. Each sending out a solitary
Light into a vacant quarter of the
    Void : like luminous creatures
Crossing distant fathoms of an abyss,
Trailing insectile tendrils, giving
Off sparks of antenna or mandible,
Haloed in the aspects of their light.
I thought that perhaps they were
    Only pilot-lights of some greater
Structure to come, that their fragile
Movements into vacancy would bear
New forms out into the darkness.
For a time I did not know whether
    The lights lay beyond me or if they
Only played across the inner surface
Of my closed eyes : no sound
Of a carriage or engine reached me
Where I had gone. Somewhere ahead,
The trembling sound of a mandolin.