Mark Brady

A QUARTER FOR THE MESSENGER

  

Life is a limited resource

Hidden in the expansion of the dark question

Lurking behind the curtain, swaying with planets and playing tunes with a galaxial grin.

Time grinds to dust among these pendulums

Heavy with the weight of sleeping orbits and sunlight on their faces

Collected in the vacuum

emptied on Thursdays without a trace.

 

Write this down, note, message, deliver this and sit:

Tell my friend that of the evening

Dinner will be served among friends

And the cornish paste awaits among the martini sticks.

There will be no parade this year–the old man is sick–

But the table will be set and candles lit.

Bring a conversation and don’t be late,

A fine facade for those unfashionable and find their lives redeemed in the delicacy of the remoulade.

We’ll hang the crescent moon, and if my friend sees fit, we’ll leave when we are ready,

Though our separate ways be lit.

 

Here, take this for your troubles

Time is just a loan

Following your footsteps

Finding their own way home.

 

And one more thing, when you wend

your way home,

Wake the sleeping children;

They have a benefit to attend.

 

 

 

COFFEE AND THE MORNING PAPER

The secret of the morning hides behind the rising sun

No more revealed when the day is done, evening comes

And the sun settles on someone else

Magic is the idea that holds the day together

Tricksters and their mysteries

Truth the secret revealed behind the veil

Promised in the vanishings

If you’ve seen the show before, pay again

Varieties deepen the mystery

Let the velleities of your day rest among the riddles

Remark the seance of sunsets when the hour darkens

But dare not look behind the rising or the setting sun

No one has, and they invented your day

Spend it on the sobriety of hard work

Rewards are in the paychecks

And the same unanswered questions glistening

In the morning sun

Jewels for those who hide the answers

 

 

 

DISSOLUTION 

I

When the winds of winter whistle and howl,

The windows rattle a ragged tune.

A somber stillness enters the room, and

I remember that I am what I remember:

Dust blown, swirled, settled; sifted accumulations.

From time to time I forget.

 

This is a cathedral town where the bells clang,

Rancor in the belfry.

Noises off softly remind me

Of tunes unwritten, with some regret, and no one sang.

From time to time I forget.

 

Pigeons out in the square walk and wobble,

Mumble in dusty, shuffling undertones,

As if higher tones would break into a squabble,

Rumble into scattered dust and broken bones.

Dissipation of the scene will not do

Along this or any remembered avenue.

Lest I forget.

 

II

Who put the name upon the rose?

Not me, not in my memory.

Besides, an imprint doesn’t last,

Not in the past along a windswept plain.

Nor would I suppose if someone sang,

Or if pigeons wept somewhere on the set,

Dust would rise to even leave a stain.

Nor would I forget.

 

But who am I to say or interject?

A little of this and that, here and there.

We shuffle into the reading room, scotch and port,

A sitting and a murmuring, as if murmurs matter.

Murmurs in the museum,

                        Low tones in the galleries.

A little up, a little down.

I am what my memories are made of,

And what they forget.

 

Beyond the headland the winds roam,

Over ocean waves and ocean foam.

Wherever I was I will never step again,

As memories sink beneath the open sea.

What has become of me, up and down?

Stolen thoughts here and there float in vain.

Suffering conscious dissolution until they drown.

So many certain ambiguities and what ifs,

Pushed out at foreign shores and waiting sea cliffs.

 

At the headland

The wind in the baffles of the buoy groans,

Awakening above a fairy circle of singing stones.

                        Here and now.

 

 

 

The Courtyard

 

 

Bring in the dead.  They’ve been out there long enough.

Beneath the torchlight, faces flickering in it.  Mouths agape,

You’d think they thought long enough and fought for

What they said.  Their skin is paper thin, drawn to the jaw, hard against

The paving stones of the courtyard, flickering.  Bring them in.

Shallow eyes betray.  They’ve baked long enough, heard the drum.

Still.  Stillness greets the clattering.  Hoof beats.  This way,

Bring them here, before the horses come.

 

We’ve had wars before, but this...  Close the door.

And pestilence, good lord.  But this we hadn’t seen.

Then Newton came, counting angels falling to the ground.

Beneath each one reason fled.  Not seen this before.

What a terrible sound.  Whoompf and death exhaling, terrible breath.

Foul.  Bring in the dead, and close the door.

 

Oh, I know he had his polemics, and Telemachus too, before that.

Yes, and their right to speak, oh yes, that too.  Gives me a stomach ache.

Reasoning to conclusions.  But if you ask me, it was all a witches’ brew. 

Now look at us:  Angels with contusions.  Show me the fossils, that’s what I say.

Now they’re dead and buried and resting in their graves.

Digging like dogs, they are, thinking the answer lies in bones.

 

Look out and see the torchlight flickers.  The courtyard is bare.

Yet the dead are still out there dying for what they said,

And meet the air with one last cold and fixating stare.

What’s in store?

Bring the torches too, and bring in the dead.

Close the door.

 

 

 

UP AND BACK

 

 

Eternities have no pride

Nor life born in beginnings

Spinnings and their threads

Wound on spools

And then unwound again

On this and the next coming tide

 

The sun is lengthening into May

The soul of the north wind tires

Down into the mouths of sunny bays.

Behind the curtain of the east and the western curtain

A current or its imagining conspires with the poles

The wind comes ‘round to come from the south, then delays

Long enough for suspended bows to eternities less certain

Why they were gifted into tides and have no souls.

 

Woodworm, words, driftwood, seaweed, coughed

Words lift, rise and fall, gulled

Into birth by sea spray’s plumes and tassels

Shift like sands under shift of tides

Lift, windrift, shift from the same dreams as sand dunes and sand castles

Fear is not the answer

Where the question is not asked

And the word is written in sand

Awaiting this and the next coming wave

Born of the morning and the evening tide

East and western seasons

Reasons eternities have no pride

And no need of reasons