Читать книгу Groundwork - Rustum Kozain - Страница 8

Speech is irreversible: a word cannot be retracted,

except precisely by saying that one retracts it.

– Roland Barthes, ‘Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers’

In indecision we drive a block,

then stop at the end of my cul-de-sac

to look at passing cars, graffito tags

on vibracrete, and curious neighbours.

The sun draws water, a seagull

flies its sorties looking to scavenge,

a skittish lemoenduif

launches in fright from a garden wall.

We try again with logic to loosen

a knot, our complication: you

will stay with your lover;

I will return to waiting

for that empty click of the snug fit

and the faculty of abstract nouns –

love, death, God. And time

that will not freeze. I speak as if

I can speak, presume, and speak for you.

You flash with anger. Like a child

I wish I could reel back time,

turn it all back by the one click

needed to return words to inchoate limbo;

to watch again curious neighbours;

to watch again a skittish dove

launch in fright from its garden wall;

to look again at you in sunlight;

or regard our complication, this complication

we call our bodies that we’ve flung

into the same orbit, one, two, several times.

Nothing can be more complicated

than this. Or more simple. Nothing

is more simple than the spangle

of two bodies hanging in orbit, in sunlight.

But no. My words now float

somewhere in suspension,

unthought colloids

troubling the last sunlight behind you,

the bright frame of the car window

darkening; you, cross-legged

in the driver’s seat. And cloud

as the day fails and dusk deepens

to purple, then prussian. The roads

sudden trails of light and busy

with weekenders, cars filled

with youth who still roar from windows

in their agony of looking for trouble.

The roads and the world and all that backfires

counted and catalogued

in my book of the dead . . . I tell you

of a moment’s suspension, the dark

strong grip of my father’s hand

as my own fails on a mossy ledge –

a child for a moment hanging free

and who sees in his father’s eyes

something beyond the human:

it is this look that saves him,

something in the father’s eyes

that softens from surprise and anger;

and framed by the coal-dark face

against grey winter cloud.

The father caught finally

recognising his role.

But that is one moment, one click

and the years will darken

like they do between father and child.

You tell me of your own father

eaten by the age-old cancer

of this land, running

from black vandals into the past

and finding himself drawn life-large

in the grudging cross hairs of white vandals;

of brothers like eels slipping

from nest to nest, their father’s sons.

And your grandfather, the first man

you loved; his agony

that could do nothing but follow

its male expression

in the predictable fist, like my brother;

your grandfather who taught you

how to measure out beer in a moving car

while he watched the road for cops.

Man and granddaughter you hold

to me, palms opening on what

I imagine your own

brief, bright kingdom.

Then, an expletive of delight

as you jackknife into that memory,

come upright again.

So night falls, you laughing,

cross-legged in the driver’s seat,

and dipping in and out of the years,

reordering time until, unknown

to you, a man’s eyes soften in your own

and you too are a child again.