Six Favorite Poems of David
Mitchell
Voyage
More peculiar than anxious, thisJourney to the south by night.
The compass rose has shed its thorns and
Reefs receded into deeper water,
Where their names are little more than
Incantations of spume and flotsam.
The bearings ruled on this night's chart
Come near to being arabesques, almost
The shelling of an ear bent to
Sand on some beach still to be deposited.
It is in the mapping of you onto my
Continuum that I find shapes beyond
Any bounding of space, durations that
Enclosed and release one another.
The waves are lapidary and may
Yet cleave reflections of these
Vessels into diamonds; gathered by
Night, they can suffice to feed
The sick and heal the poor
The leprecauns have made offWith real rain again this summer,
Leaving us a dampening imitation
That lacks the verve and charisma
Of weather's truly political side;
We are in a Republican season,
Spirits sodden and unheeding of either
Misery or joy: not enough pain for one,
Not enough buoyancy for the other.
The wind has died an Independent's death,
Leaving the field to a paltry shower
Infinitely less congenial than the torrents
That once descended from now near-forgotten
Machinery rusting deep beneath a platform
Too vacuous to bear the weight
Of speakers with any gravity.
We have choked the lifeFrom youth: sent it sprawling
On wintry ice to bow before
Gods lacking even
The sweet vitality
To be false.
Today eager hands receivedThe tatters of a musician's life,
Dogeared, broken-backed,
Foxed with grief that deepens
The runically encoded beauty.
Rebirth is justice:
The dreamer's part is to hold
Joy in trust until timemoths
Have eaten away all trace of sin,
Leaving fugue, counterpoint,
And a distant oboe,
Whose wistful countenance is veiled
In forgetfulness and lace.
Dead of day, but not lost.Another summons echoing of
Maquetry looses the poetiped
Into freefall, tumbling against
Tesselated walls as though
Possessed by falcon's lust.
It's a matter for slowness
In repenting, a chasm verged
But not encroached. Larks are
Fonder in the tongue but small
Of whispering, an artifice some
Other thief has smoothly tuned.
The falter-hearted cannot
Venture into precepts so
Finely edged; the feathering
Of dives beyond their
Meagerness as much a strain
Of atmospherics as of pinnae.
We nomads have the string and
Chalk to measure you, and that
Remains the wherefore of your
Need; without us, you will
Wither into petty vintners and
Viniform surmise.
So we come at beck and dawn;
Shine in the vast reflected
Blue of Baryonikov irradiant,
Plicated anger of a thousand
Million multiplexor nuclei;
Revel in our demi-musics,
Paired and gemmatified
Into roundels no archer's
Aim can fasten on; flicker
Like the suns that pass you
In your muckle dreams of
Endless fleeing.
Don't bother envying:
These journeys too shall
End crumpled beside the bed,
Dented damask scented by
Novels written in the
Belly of unsulfured fires.
There's little glamor left
In brigandage: it all belongs
To toffeemakers and lancers
Of unresisting boils, courtiers
Of a royalty too agued to see
Shadows of the knifely gesture
Homed on sallow throats. We
Dance in your corridas, play
The threnodies you stop your
Ears against, and eat
The veriest hollow souls
Of children you once believed
You owned but failed to sell.
We are the journeymen of
Trades no one ever thought
To see reborn; your doom
Is calling us from graves less
Quiet than you'll find. Pay
Us at your peril. We will
Earn our keep, and in
The keeping you'll do worse
Than perish: live instead
In ghastly, garish splendor.
The stones themselves will pity
You, passing limpetish from
Tongue to tongue in fevered brandy.
You'll have no respite from
This prattleskulling until
The Universe itself goes mute.
Melted to incandescence by
The aroma of fresh ink,
Yielding stiffness
Of fine paper,
Elegant lines of the font
Of eternal renewal:
We are bound by language
As by other tyrants,
Although the torture
Remains far sweeter, even
In memory.
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