Photo: Photo by Karsten Wurth on Unsplash.
Poem: Living at the edge
'For all the pain of breath there is a sweetness living...'
For all the pain of breath there is a sweetness living
at the edge. The rank volcano stamps its feet,
snorts at peasants working fields below the slopes,
is full of menace that the rich lands there
will some time seethe with fires no one owns.
It is not a death of living or a life of dread,
for all seems normal: the buses run, the trains
are more or less on time, and the seasons
haunt each daybreak with cantos from the birds.
It is the edge that sharpens up the sun, shapes
its starkness, sends shadows down the vineyards
threatens retribution for the sins of past and now.
The present is the present, and the past
a convoluted muddle of the best and worst.
It is the fierceness of the golden flowers,
the radiant tones of choristers, the reassuring dawns
that tell the unseen legends of times
as yet to come, the final realisation of it all.
