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.

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