What is movement?
Creation’s favourite: the birds that serenade the fleeing stars, the Pamplemousse dawn, draped in pink and red across the sky; the misty mountain face, the city stirring with contemplation, gasoline-fuelled dreams, the workers assuming stations. (Awake, they say, and seek before the light begins to fade. This time is scarcely ours).
And then the second phase, the day itself, with beetle rolling dung of sun across the sky, the heat that rises with the hours. So dreams mutate: and seekers find a partner in the realm of action, never perfectly aligned, each path a crooked bough that grows from soil and rain; yet still the horns are blown, and things are done; the rush consumes, the tavern doors flung open, the wine is sweet or sour, is drunk or spilt; the circus comes to town, with acrobats and elephants, and solitary sages leaning on darkened doors, half peering in; and medicine men, and lechers, and buyers and sellers, and children rushing after butterflies, chasing the loops of wings, eternal in the moment; with urgency in everything. (Let things be done while breath and youth is on our side, and rivers spill their fruit and luck and brokenness, all in the name of life, in life that has no name, but flows the same.)
And then the evening: when actions begin to sigh. Down to earth then sinks the sun, along with everything that’s lost or won, with leaves of light upon the mountain face, and some (the best at listening), can hear the mountains speak, (what do these gleaming mountains say?), then soon the evening mist has settled on the ruins and castles, with hands as soft as water, with dreams as quiet as night; and all the workers hurry behind their walls, to close off death while life is still for living. And one by one the evening stars reveal another spectacle, a circus in the sky, a gramophone for the gods. Lovers compare their stories and children their memories of butterflies. The workers rate the handiwork of their castles; the sages sift through silence. (Only in silence are we able to listen, they say).
And finally the night, as thick as tropical rain, a wealth of death that hovers over everything, gorgeous and sleek like a panther, the mountain gone, the workers’ lights extinguished (they said their prayers at last), the race has been and gone, the circus closed, all things have found their place, the moon of heaven glows. (Your names were toys, she says, your work was never real, though real things were made from it, now let your spirits fly).
