emptiness. There looming bright, our lone satellite, selene, lunar, crepuscular, corrupt, alien like me. Pandemonium rings in the trees as gusts scrape my face. I hum nursery rhymes again, and again I’m absent. I have no rainbow. Pigments are all choked through with lack of light. Shapeless and shapeless I shrink to a twig, its inconspicuousness. Stardust falls like fountains as the fugue goes on, and tears seem to be falling with them, watering the siblings. And the statue of a cherub’s singing “willow, willow.” Echoes of nothing, here, negate my reason. I wish I knew what to do right now, as tedium taps at the hour. The same old crisis. Everything was fine yesterday, as I recalled how pearls of sun-drench once glittered the bay, pebbles touched by swell, as pulses of light swaddled me. I see paradise again. I see mother - father - brothers - others - lovers (to come ?), others ... I see them all, lined up, shadows against conifers, a cavalcade of ghosts ... Outside now, by contrast, are yew trees, cypresses, brambles and berries. They are all wearing the night like a dream. Shifting shades I imagine are ravens squawking shrill, in acceptance of their nature. Do I hallucinate, I wonder. Do I hallucinate as I see myself, as a toddler, playing on the grass? As garden parties play out, superimposed over the cadaver of night? I wonder, since the scene ends. Everyone melts into time - and love filters out through the trees, as I sit here and wait for the skeletal dance to resume, memories haunting the rim of the house, its paths and edges, its gates ... I look down at my body and astonishingly there’s no puncture mark – I’m intact. My skin says I’m young. My bones do not break. Fingertips roam as weather vanes. Is it madness to see the moon that colour? Is it madness?
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