You can’t go back and change the beginning,
but you can start where you are
and change the ending.
— C. S. Lewis —
Secret Thots for a Very Private Gentleman
tales, temptation, and titillation…
(enchanted by this strange proximity)
Longing, and mystery, and delight…
as if from the swaying blackness
of some slow-motion masquerade
onto the dim bridge you came.And night flowed, and silent there floated
into its satin streams
that black mask’s wolf-like profile
and those tender lips of yours.And under the chestnuts, along the canal
you passed, luring me askance.
What did my heart discern in you,
how did you move me so?In your momentary tenderness,
or in the changing contour of your shoulders,
did I experience a dim sketch
of other — irrevocable — encounters?Perhaps romantic pity
led you to understand
what had set trembling that arrow
now piercing through my verse?I know nothing. Strangely
the verse vibrates, and in it, an arrow…
Perhaps you, still nameless, were
the genuine, the awaited one?But sorrow not yet quite cried out
perturbed our starry hour.
Into the night returned the double fissure
of your eyes, eyes not yet illumed.For long? For ever? Far off
I wander, and strain to hear
the movement of the stars above our encounter
and what if you are to be my fate…Longing, and mystery, and delight,
and like a distant supplication…
My heart must travel on.
But if you are to be my fate…— Vladimir Nabokov —
translated by Olga Voronina
The crickets are raucous; wild for a reason, I guess.
The wind feels like… courage.
(Like that, only simpler.)
The fire pit smoulders; my hair smells of ash.
Tonite.
A season comes to pass framed by silky memories
and eventual, hopeful strains for some near-distant night.
You. Me. This.
We spread ourselves wide to the horizon that cradles our future –
the velvet expanse of our yet-to-be-known.
Awash in the restlessness of almost-goneness
I wish I had more time
grateful I can leave some of all that was behind.
A fruition of time that on this eve
blossoms and wilts.
Leaving is bittersweet.
It always is.
L
– Lola Moi –
– Christina Georgina Rossetti
The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, knowing at last how you got there, and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
– Margaret Atwood –