Читать книгу Cardos y lluvia - Kate Clanchy - Страница 37

But does every man feel like this at forty –

I mean, it’s like Thomas Wolfe’s New York, his

heady light, the stunning plunging canyons, beauty –

pale stars winking hazy downtown quitting-time,

and the winter moon flooding the sky-scrapers,

northern –

an aspiring place, glory of the bridges, foghorns

are enormous messages, a looming mastery

that lays its hand on the young man’s bowels

until he feels in that air, that rising spirit

all things are possible, he rises with it

until he feels that he can never die –

Can it be like this, and is this what it means

in Glasgow now, writing as the aircraft roar

over building sites, in this warm west light

by the daffodil banks that were never so crowded and

lavish –

green May, and the slow great blocks rising

under yellow tower cranes, concrete and glass and

steel

out of a dour rubble it was and barefoot children

gone –

Is it only the slow stirring, a city’s renewed life

that stirs me, could it stir me so deeply

as May, but could May have stirred

what I feel of desire and strength

like an arm saluting a sun?

All January, all February the skaters

enjoyed Bingham’s pond, the crisp cold evenings,

they swung and flashed among car headlights,

the drivers parked round the unlit pond

to watch them, and give them light, what laughter

and pleasure rose in the rare lulls

of the yards-away stream of wheels along Great

Western Road!

The ice broke up, but the boats came out.

The painted boats are ready for pleasure.

The long light needs no headlamps.

Black oar cuts a glitter: it is heaven on earth.

Is it true that we come alive

not once, but many times?

We are drawn back to the image

of the seed in darkness, or the graying skin

of the snake that hides a shining one –

it will push that used-up matter off

and even the film of the eye is sloughed –

That the world may be the same, and we are not

and so the world is not the same,

the second eye is making again

this place, these waters and these towers,

they are rising again

as the eye stands up to the sun,

as the eye salutes the sun.

Many things are unspoken

in the life of a man, and with a place

there is an unspoken love also

in undercurrents, drifting, waiting its time.

A great place and its people are not renewed lightly.

The caked layers of grime

grow warm, like homely coats.

But yet they will be dislodged

and men will still be warm.

The old coats are discarded.

The old ice is loosed.

The old seeds are awake.

Slip out of darkness, it is time.