Part 21 (1/2)

XI.

As if the prisms of the kaleidoscope I plunged once in a b.u.t.t of muddied water surfaced like a marvellous lights.h.i.+p and out of its silted crystals a monk's face that had spoken years ago from behind a grille spoke again about the need and chance to salvage everything, to re-envisage the zenith and glimpsed jewels of any gift mistakenly abased ...

What came to nothing could always be replenished.

'Read poems as prayers,' he said, 'and for your penance translate me something by Juan de la Cruz.'

Returned from Spain to our chapped wilderness, his consonants aspirate, his forehead s.h.i.+ning, he had made me feel there was nothing to confess.

Now his sandalled pa.s.sage stirred me on to this: How well I know that fountain, filling, running, although it is the night.

That eternal fountain, hidden away, I know its haven and its secrecy although it is the night.

But not its source because it does not have one, which is all sources' source and origin although it is the night.

No other thing can be so beautiful.

Here the earth and heaven drink their fill although it is the night.

So pellucid it never can be muddied, and I know that all light radiates from it although it is the night.

I know no sounding-line can find its bottom, n.o.body ford or plumb its deepest fathom although it is the night.

And its current so in flood it overspills to water h.e.l.l and heaven and all peoples although it is the night.

And the current that is generated there, as far as it wills to, it can flow that far although it is the night.

And from these two a third current proceeds which neither of these two, I know, precedes although it is the night.

This eternal fountain hides and splashes within this living bread that is life to us although it is the night.

Hear it calling out to every creature.

And they drink these waters, although it is dark here because it is the night.

I am repining for this living fountain.

Within this bread of life I see it plain although it is the night.

XII.

Like a convalescent, I took the hand stretched down from the jetty, sensed again an alien comfort as I stepped on ground to find the helping hand still gripping mine, fish-cold and bony, but whether to guide or to be guided I could not be certain for the tall man in step at my side seemed blind, though he walked straight as a rush upon his ashplant, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

Then I knew him in the flesh out there on the tarmac among the cars, wintered hard and sharp as a blackthorn bush.

His voice eddying with the vowels of all rivers came back to me, though he did not speak yet, a voice like a prosecutor's or a singer's, cunning, narcotic, mimic, definite as a steel nib's downstroke, quick and clean, and suddenly he hit a litter basket with his stick, saying, 'Your obligation is not discharged by any common rite.

What you do you must do on your own.

The main thing is to write for the joy of it. Cultivate a work-l.u.s.t that imagines its haven like your hands at night dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast.

You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous.

Take off from here. And don't be so earnest, so ready for the sackcloth and the ashes.

Let go, let fly, forget.

You've listened long enough. Now strike your note.'

It was as if I had stepped free into s.p.a.ce alone with nothing that I had not known already. Raindrops blew in my face as I came to and heard the harangue and jeers going on and on. 'The English language belongs to us. You are raking at dead fires, rehearsing the old whinges at your age.

That subject people stuff is a cod's game, infantile, like this peasant pilgrimage.

You lose more of yourself than you redeem doing the decent thing. Keep at a tangent.

When they make the circle wide, it's time to swim out on your own and fill the element with signatures on your own frequency, echo-soundings, searches, probes, allurements, elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea.'

The shower broke in a cloudburst, the tarmac fumed and sizzled. As he moved off quickly the downpour loosed its screens round his straight walk.

from Sweeney Redivivus

The First Gloss

Take hold of the shaft of the pen.