Читать книгу Catastrophic - Humphrey Hartney - Страница 13

I dreamed I was some kind of shaman or

was I

A shaman dreaming I was me

dreaming that I was at least

able to walk into that sky.

And the dogs were ahead of me now,

running into

the great smoke canopy

arching over all our dreams.

I was following them, climbing stairways carved

into mountainsides of smoke.

I trailed some great sorcerer’s cloak – and ran so fast upwards

That when I pierced the roof of those fumes,

I kept shooting into that dark sky.

At last in that clear air

I looked about me - astounded now

As thousands of other Australians – nightwalkers just like me –

streamed up into that Stratosphere.

For the first time in months we saw those stars which,

Lost in the smoke, we came to doubt.

The planets were seen again

For the first time in weeks, and bent themselves back

Into their graceful ellipses -

as if their smoko was over

and the foreman looking on.

We breathed new air in those heights, a vintage of breath

we'd long forgot

So pure, so rare, we wondered if our corpses

rotting in their sleep

Back down there in the smoke,

still breathed.

The dogs turned their heads back to me and smiled

then charged on

all of us now following them

in this great convoy of protest

charging

the gates of

heaven.