Night-time
"Night-time"
Driving across the desert at night alone
is like driving with a time machine
Straight lines, straight paths
across billions of years
through tortured Precambrian schists
upon which Miocene fires once uneasily flowed,
and the bones of seas which grew in between,
covered with cacti and memories.
I drive through skies emptied
of friendly stars by a malevolent full moon.
I wish you were with me
--that anyone worthy was with me--
But there is nobody,
and the air lies about the coming spring,
and so I return to my Skellig in the sky alone.
I thought time would heal all my wounds
but I find, the older I get,
and the more time passes,
the wounds just turn into scabs
painful for all to see.
They scar my face,
they scar my heart,
and nobody wants to come close
to see how my eyes view the world.
Not since you left for the sea.
Since you left,
I have tried to fill the void
in a thousand lonely ways
with other people and other things
and all they do is rummage around
in the open cellar
and steal the good wine
which you laid down to age,
leaving me empty and without soul.
I am alone now, upon the mountain
with my glass of bitter Chenin Noir
and the fact is:
I don't know if I can love anymore,
without you; how can the land
fill the gaping hole
left by the abandonment
of the lost sea which
once covered it like a warm blanket
and left it to dream of wonder.
How do I open myself up,
when all those who come seek
to destroy that which I have
laboriously tried to build and maintain?
What was so wrong with my land
that you found you
abandoned me for the sea?
Driving across the desert at night alone
is like driving with a time machine
Straight lines, straight paths
across billions of years
through tortured Precambrian schists
upon which Miocene fires once uneasily flowed,
and the bones of seas which grew in between,
covered with cacti and memories.
I drive through skies emptied
of friendly stars by a malevolent full moon.
I wish you were with me
--that anyone worthy was with me--
But there is nobody,
and the air lies about the coming spring,
and so I return to my Skellig in the sky alone.
I thought time would heal all my wounds
but I find, the older I get,
and the more time passes,
the wounds just turn into scabs
painful for all to see.
They scar my face,
they scar my heart,
and nobody wants to come close
to see how my eyes view the world.
Not since you left for the sea.
Since you left,
I have tried to fill the void
in a thousand lonely ways
with other people and other things
and all they do is rummage around
in the open cellar
and steal the good wine
which you laid down to age,
leaving me empty and without soul.
I am alone now, upon the mountain
with my glass of bitter Chenin Noir
and the fact is:
I don't know if I can love anymore,
without you; how can the land
fill the gaping hole
left by the abandonment
of the lost sea which
once covered it like a warm blanket
and left it to dream of wonder.
How do I open myself up,
when all those who come seek
to destroy that which I have
laboriously tried to build and maintain?
What was so wrong with my land
that you found you
abandoned me for the sea?