E. Best: lyrics | fictions | episodes
snowflakes flutter to the ledge
as I sit in darkness
awaiting the mystery of the dove’s descent
your face drops in instead
unannounced
the bell tolls thirty minutes
my time is at an end
sacred or profane
it’s all the same
love is all there is
an unseen flame
binding us all
to itself
you wrote your name in the palm of my hand
and laid the cornerstone
I threw into the lake
it sunk so deep
we haven’t found it to this day
though I never tire of looking
like your book
that I drowned in the bathtub
(I am so sorry)
but it never was the same
after that
it says I’m writ in the palm of your hand
and the rock that was laid for us that day
can never wear away
I went hunting the hart
but the hart I did not see
except for one sweet moment
then only fleetingly
this lonely life is brief
and then to be at peace
I went hunting the hart
a hart too quick for me
softly
softly the waves lap
you were waiting
on the library steps
when least expected
but not forgot
for whom I threw away the trinket
of great price
you hold it at your breast
forever
soft as water
hold the light
as I search the whole world over
for comfort
to comfort you have come
love quickening out of silence
to split wide open
and recover all that I am
so long I have waited
listening for a footfall at the door
now in that very listening
am assured
that You have never left this house at all
for one second
but have in all this time
been overlooked
simply ignored
I opened the gate
on a garden of stones
at a house on the edge of the world
surrounded by love
and the darkness of night
the uncomplicated attention
of quiet things
like someone
throwing the curtains open
on a glorious summer day
it has always been this way
I never wrote to you –
perhaps I should
love ties rope round
and then it pulls
leaves us stretching
like a kid under a tree
for one bright apple
nobody sees
I don’t like apples –
never did
don’t eat fruit much
and won’t until
sweet berries lean
towards my door
and that will happen
to me no more
when the pheasant hit the window
we were eating cake
lemon crumbs on our lips
I could have kissed you
but didn’t
[first posted 23 May 2015]
1. The Death of Gulls
Like hail they fell,
in numbers uncountable,
leaving no one left to wail but me,
Godless upon an iron sea.
After the storm I was cut adrift,
me a mid-shipman,
ten days out to sea,
and never a sight of land for me,
nor woman’s touch,
but her dark eyes
swam before me all the way
to the whirlpool at the end of days
where under a glowering sky,
still beardless,
I died the death of gulls.
This sea-tale I recount,
by way of settlement
to the God that has deserted me
this seventeenth day of May,
Seventeen hundred and fifty three.
Now the Devil take me.
2. The Last Island
The storm levelled the house
and I raised sail;
made for the last island of all.
Seven days have now passed,
my boat lies broken on the beach
and I lay dying of love.
In my own blood I write this scrawl
and face my God alone:
my maker,
and my unmaker,
Lord of the Last Island.
3. The Voyage Out
On the voyage out, we were becalmed
for seven days and nights,
one for each decade of an old soak’s life.
Untouched by either current or breeze,
by degrees, I grew mad
so that when the wind did whisper to me,
it was in sea dreams I could not read;
strange alphabet, strange tongue,
not known to me, or anyone,
hieroglyphs on the pavements of a seaside town,
out of season all year round.
And there I was delayed,
incanting, have remained,
casting back these stones into the sea,
words formed in extremity,
holding back the one thing I could read:
“Oh why hast Thou forsaken me?”
