John Holloway

Riddles I

Listen to me: and I will tell you about Nothing at all. Some from the green river, Some from the spring that opens the rock At a touch from within, music asleep in the hill, Drinking, are cooled; but this Is water as thin as wind and Spreading as large. The look you feel On the face you know from within: lives Nowhere but spreads down the world, holding The bandmaster sun and all the creatures of day Tranquil as a child asleep. You think it breathes Like a figure in stone at a touch from within. The music of darkness. A self-, a Self, stirring.

I1 Paradoxes of its All colours, no shape, many and One its Giant rhythm rebuffs Stolidly as the hill, wind. That, also, Has amplitudes earth-deep. Nothing astute, Clever, ingenious rings across the great Canyon: only One voice diffused As dawn and terrible As dawn to the hanging man yet What handhold on the rockface of the world Except to hear and heed, all day, all night: 'Be where you Are: I am Reality'.

I11 I the horn waterfall Of the bird's claw gushes by, Or that zig-zag about the sky At the wind's hand cannot reply To your scorn and boot yet Who knows how long before Scorn and the rest shall all Crumble where the flowers of spring All root their feet in me and spring from Dust ?

IV Bulking in darkness first, the glowering verge Of the world mounts it. How can it not be Strongest and worst of things? The sun Despairs, day gone grey, Light turned water stings

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Your eyes, roaring . . . open them now (A world of drums turned rustle) see A laundered land or scent New air and scented soil Smell sweeter than its flowers; yet now they glow, Kindling beneath a sky washed pale. Wash men too, Rain, Let water light their sun.

V Not thing nor workman; but Itself, haltindifferently. Yet made By difference . . . also by sameness. Monotonous With the half-monotony of consistence. Cannot make Nor speak of itself; and in this also is A king: its primacy Colourless service . . . resolving World, and watcher, to window. Then, Being glass, you cannot twist it Even a little . . . only polish, or shatter. Vacant, not vacuous, in the glass it ranges All the perspectives of truth. To be is serve, Style, men also find.

VI Thought to be noise and water. Water, yes, but Not a gushet like tears. More, A big river. And its first Coming a flood-you are strong With surprise, spectacle, difference . . . Then, Beware recession: finding the black corn, Silted windows, murders in lofts. A hundred Forms it has, dies a hundred times, Each more squalid than the last. It cannot Be shared or abridged. Like all other floods It ends in legends, all false. But what it landscapes is men. To avoid Dry boredom of lunar plains, Welcome even Grief.

VII Gentle as candle but bright As the sun: water of The diamond: sleep But sleep in an oven of light. Brief almost As a meteor: beginning and end Sudden, unlooked-for and shining. Two (It is fragile and private) At the most can share it. Fatigue, Thirst, the going of a train, or just A change in the key of the day, end it;

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But its after-image is eternal: yes One part of Joy alone, once joy has come, can go.

VIII Young man’s brief breathing-space, and old man’s wife, Lightening day with dark; most unseen M e n nearest, halt Your gossamer hand; let me (Being now not young nor old) Read till my reading-lamp Mingle with moon and stars, And, like wise men with age, Virgins with love, you with the mid-day sun, I seek what first I shun. Great is your power; yet not so great, but in Our curt and simple tongue, To do your work you have to speak your name. ‘Sleep, sleep’, you gravely call. And then we know.

IX As dusk descends, the mother gathers up Her children’s toys. Laughter And grief turn peace . . . and so, Grey Eminence To time, and dark, now come Like night but quieter . . . come more like dawn: Your fetters mean release, Being invisible. Let your light foot not lag. My door ajar, My quiet untidy room, Spurn no one travelling, you least : And leave me few Of all the things I have. Reading, I shall not turn my head. Fill your giant hands, Oblivion, while I read.

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