Читать книгу Listener - Lemn Sissay - Страница 12

And if you were the evaporating tears

Then I would be the developing cloud.

There, the sound of rain,

The sound of the between-us-sea,

The shingle shore gently fills our footsteps.

I have searched for you my entire life.

We have stood on opposite shores

Listening to under-sea wails.

No translations as yet, but this.

I lie upon the earth-floor

As a lion might in deep dusk-sun.

Here I hear all the footsteps of the world

Reverberate in the beneath-me-rocks,

Trying to find your first person singular steps,

Trying to find a sentence in a history,

But the needle glints in the golden haystack

Of dawn at the same time a strike of sunlight

Lances its eye. The world is smaller,

The larger my knowledge – still.

Standing, I hear the sun rise,

Not the birds of morning nor the cock crowing.

The cars coughing the footsteps of early workers

Muffled in the red dust trudging through sleepless mystery

But I hear the actual sun rising.

And as a sea can turn to dust before the eyes

I hear you through the sand storm – the needle!

Slow running from the red terror

Arms wide to protect yourself or welcome me,

Feet dragging through sand and globules of blood

Burning in the heatwave wiping hot sand from your face,

Men with guns on the horizon far behind you,

The past tense threatening your presence.

I hear a concert of AK47s click, as thousands

Reload. The heat is tremendous – you have a radio.

But the sound of sand lifting from the ground

In the grip of the wind, disturbs – you understand what is

happening,

Not through sight but through the sounds.

I could almost hear you, your breathing

As you gave birth again and another sister

Opened her eyes. Her wet face of sand.

In the drawing of this drama, the mist of mystery

Rising above the airwaves and heatwaves

We have scattered around the world,

Revolutions between us. Implosions of conscience.

Corrupting earthquakes have split our family – between us

Swallows migrate above the Atlantic Ocean

Pixellating the sky on tidal waves of heat

With such damnable ease.

And amongst the purple rain and stormy airwaves

Radio waves like flocks of swallows or the flamingos of

Lake Tana

That seem to fly out from the reflecting solar wind

Land upon both of us with feather-wing ease,

Bringing my world to yours and your world to mine.

And now that we meet,

The sand storm lays low.

Like a pride of lions

After the chase,

The sun rises, its golden mane shakes.

You tell me, ‘I heard a poem on the World Service,’

And I finally, face to face, get to tell you

It was me

Tuning in through the hissing noise

To you tuning in to me.