Читать книгу The Sunrise Liturgy - Mia Anderson - Страница 9

Before there’s light, there’s a wall of black halfway up the sky

glooming as if a distant storm-cloud

had rolled in

or been rolled out

then lodged

on top of the far shore.

Or had it made it that far? Or both far and away beyond?

Who was to know.

There was no light to see by

just black on black.

Would something crash soon, something break or burst —

down or forth or out?

Who knew.

Sleep rolled around.

Closer to dawn, a windowful of blank, etched on by naked trees :

dance still as still life, nature morte. The blank : full

so full the foghorns must sound,

the coast guard and freighter invisible in the breath of the river.

The riverbreath had begun to precipitate out at first on the

topmost branches

the fingers in this still dance

fitting the tips before lightfall with gloves as light as breath

divinable if doubtable;

but now

while the sun’s own foghorn ooooo’d its retinal signal of potential

to our intimations of sunrise and

the Imminence

began to burnish the backside of the grey,

the mist

emboldened

feathered the fingers further with fur, rime no longer doubtable

no less than

visible and risible now

on the poised dancers, whose dance is… in this

retina skittering over their limbs.

The sleep of night rolls over,

likes the feel,

rolls again

rolls the riverbreath round like cud in its mouth

intestinefuls of cud that stretch out the length of the riverrun seaward

rolling, rolling

curling like unwound cud downstream

chew-chew! le train-train of rivering dawn mist

fed by imminent sun

you think I’m joking? fanciful? I say it like I see it.

Now immanent sun’s sunning up the -rise

risible and visible

and the riverbreath coating the mirror, haa-haaaing on the

mirror of us, shoreline, and us, riverains

all the breath’s neighbours and all the breath’s men

on whom the precipitate of river falls like… a baptism

a condensation of dawn. The Sun Effect :

blessed, graced, manna’d, this white fallout, this alter-precipitate

of light with voice like a foghorn,

herald of the down train.

Tin coin of sun

having mustered the wattage to burn through the grey

is gold sovereign now at break of day

and about its business of doubling and redoubling the helix of

mist twisting downstream

towards town and gown, master of ceremonies of this

mystic parade

of evaporating banners

lord of the ephemeral

His Eminence

Lord of the Things.

Mistagogy.