Trial by Space:
Mount Sinai and Mourning
Lace.
Centre stone,
Pendulum,
Down, down, down.
Think, imagine,
centre
Concentrate, reach,
reach out.
I am standing in a
room.
It is a physical room.
It is a remembered
room.
In this room is a
life-times worth
of memory – not mine.
Striped silk bustle
skirt, pink kid dance slippers, fans with petals missing.
Petticoats, bloomers,
chemises, camisoles, gloves, bags,
top hats, cloaks,
boaters, and beaver furs.
Draws of mourning
lace, cards of buttons,
reams of tapestry
wool and embroidery threads in rainbows of colour.
Fountain pens from
the 1940’s,
fencing foils, tankards,
Kafka novels,
portraits of Louis
Armstrong.
Each object shouts
for attention and significance.
Yet as I stand in the
only space there is
a small corner next
to a four-foot crucifix
in the room,
it is empty
and it is dark.
Dillon’s room was
also dark and memory bound.
His thoughts have
shifted and sifted and sorted themselves into chapters.
But mine are still
out to sea.
Still looking from on
board the good ship Hamnavoe
towards an enveloping
Fog bank.
Like smothering grief,
it moves
over me imperceptibly
covering, obscuring,
changing outlines
and landmarks,
erasing the compass
until I am submerged.
And although I know
my feet
stand planted on deck
and I hear the ships
engine grinding on
And on; there is no
feeling of
forward motion,
nothing to indicate
progress through the water.
The fog covers all.
Floating clouds how
vast, how vast.
How you deaden with
white light.
How you deafen with
density.
How you change the
context of
the topography
with veils of water.
And you clouds of the
sky O bless the Lord.
and you wives and
daughters
Sing from within the
heart of the mists
covered by the
covering vapour.
As Moses on Sinai.
The journey to the
mountain is many miles
from the sea and the
boat.
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