The Mythicals: i witness
the prequel to The Mythical set of poems.
“there is no i other then the i
which looks out from within without
at the i which is the one I,
the I of all i’s, master of itself,
the root to which all i’s can be traced,
their records tied to the beginning of this eye,
the beginning before the beginning of this beginning.”
(AMM – the contagion that killed the fisherman’s wife: 2018)
heavy traffic as usual, a distant thunder through the triple glazing,
i building the maths for each stringed dimension,
my focus broken by the frozen shrieks of metallic brakes,
followed by a heavy silence, just a moment,
quickly shattered by a woman screaming.
from the balconied window I look down towards warwick road;
a crowd surrounds an overturned van, its heavy belly exposed,
punctured wheels still turning for a journey interrupted.
behind, an empty pram dismembered, spotted in blood.
“she just stepped into the road. what could i do?
i slammed on the brakes, that’s what i did.
couldn’t avoid it, shit, no way i could.”
“the lights were changing.
there’s an SUV that’s stopped, more behind slowing,
but he, twenty yards down the road, accelerated,
and this young girl, eyes on her baby, started to cross.”
“where is he? where’s Archie? Where is He?”
There is no eye other than my eye.
From within and without I watched the play,
The moment when a life’s colours changed.
Would this still be had I looked away,
The balance of my choate entropy at stake?
Through my eight dimensions every universe flows,
As does this mother’s pain, the grief splintering her heart,
and I am become her, I am her loss, the white heat of this separation.
But this ruptured moment?
it has already passed
And its pain will ebb, surge back as a love whose purity
Will astonish all who pass by its modest plaqued place –
His essence infused into the simple words, “For our Son” –
Surrounded by wildflowers, deep within the Ridings Wood,
At peace with the rhythms running, forever running,
And I will continue to be.
Hello B
I’m not sure if you actually saw the event that led to Archie’s death or whether you have done a little research, but certainly you have captured to horror and feeling of ineffectuality the witness would feel, 100%
Having seen an elderly man taken out by a speeding car right in front of my eyes I know that feeling only too well.
G, i did not see the event, i read about it and imagined the rest. to then see the monument the parents had created in the woods was to realise that there is nothing greater than love in life, no matter how short or long.
Thanks B; this one (for me) demands slow repeat reading; and it is gradually unfolding its inner meaning.
D, this is one that developed over 3 days as i stitched it into the fabric of the mythical series, which is, itself, part of a longer sequence, “the worship of death.” fundamentally we are nothing but living graves.
Wow! I really appreciate this one, Bhi. It can be read (or should I say understood) on many levels, and yet fundamentally only on the one that is important.
Allen
Allen, i appreciate you reading this. i tried to build the layers to reflect the poems which follow, and the end game is that of death and the past defining who we are today.
Oh my gosh I went cold when I read this, an instant in time forever played out in the memory of that place. Read it several times. So sad.
S, it is sad, yet the memory of this child stays with the parents, and every time i pass the bench which commemorates his memory i am stilled and stunned by the silence and the non silence of the place. this child will not be forgotten.
“The contagion that killed the fisherman’s wife”? I have not seen a translation from the Arabic into English. This closely captures AMM’s original verse. And to use it as a setting for what follows is just this side of madness.