Middlesex
Where memory and music lead me home
Awakening to deep oval sounds
of a resonant cello
somewhere in the distance
its cycle of fifths carrying
over lark and pine.
Maybe it was Betjeman who told me
my lips were made for sin
or perhaps it was the curve
of my darling Elizabeth
breaking our silence
as the lemonlight horizon
languorously arcs. Her pelvis,
a perfumed lattice,
where I rest my weary head.
These mist-filled
autumnal mornings
drift in a veil of unknowing,
the shrouded days
heavy with possibility
and though I once welcomed the void
this aging mind
is restless
for the licorice fields,
where Chaucer’s mice
climb barley stalks,
and England’s fair earth
returns to itself once more.
The imagery of “Chaucer’s mice” and “licorice fields” roots it in something old and earthy, while “lemonlight” and “dandelion pappus” give it a dreamy lift. A hymn, yes, but also a quiet reckoning, like standing in the fog of your own past and realizing it still smells like the ache of what can’t be touched again.
I think I saw this once before. I liked it better this time, enough to say that it raised in my mind editorial possibilities quite possibly disagreeable to yours. But possibilities, Mr. Allum, are intrinsically fickle, which compels me to say no more. Keep going. It's the only way to get anywhere, except that today I read how Nietszche has written how TIME IS A FLAT CIRCLE. More promise in lace pelvice? Yes and no. I'm both sure and unsure, a negative capability. As Mallarme so wrenching put it over several pages, A CAST OF THE DICE DOES NOT ELIMINATE CHANCE.