The Lament Upon the Waters

For the disciple nothing had changed. The mood was still Gray tolerance, as the road marched along Singing its little song of despair. Once, a cry Started up out of the hills. That old, puzzling persuasion Again. Sex was part of this, And the shock of day turning into night. Though we always found something delicate (too delicate For some tastes, perhaps) to touch, to desire. And we made much of this sort of materiality That clogged the weight of starlight, made it seem Fibrous, yet there was a chance in this To see the present as it had never existed, Clear and shapeless, in an atmosphere like cut glass. At Latour-Maubourg you said this was a good thing, and on the steps Of Métro Jasmin the couriers nodded to us correctly, and the Pact was sealed in the sky. But now moments surround us Like a crowd, some inquisitive faces, some hostile ones, Some enigmatic or turned away to an anterior form of time Given once and for all. The Jetstream inscribes a final flourish That melts as it stays. The problem isn’t how to proceed But is one of being: whether this ever was, and whose It shall be. To be starting out, just one step Off the sidewalk, and as such pulled back into the glittering Snowstorm of stinging tentacles of how that would be worked out If we ever work it out. And the voice came back at him Across the water, rubbing it the wrong way: “Thou Canst but undo the wrong thou hast done.” The sackbuts Embellish it, and we are never any closer to the collision Of the waters, the peace of light drowning light, Grabbing it, holding it up streaming. It is all one. It lies All around, its new message, guilt, the admission Of guilt, your new act. Time buys The receiver, the onlooker of the earlier system, but cannot Buy back the rest. It is night that fell At the edge of your footsteps as the music stopped. And we heard the bells for the first time. It is your chapter, I said.