othertime

i dreamed a dream of life, and lived it in my sleep
and when i woke i saw through a ghost’s eyes:

a scrawling world of vacant cemeteries,
queasy seas of memory, reflections deep,
and muffled beyond purple coral banks, skies
unfathomable as eternity…

… i thought it was the vanished i could see –
void significant nothings, truth-packed lies,
unrisen suns, eclipsed in tenseless space.

for i was a poet of when
and now and then
saw written in your face
love stuff that words forgot to write –

while palpitating in our hearts tonight
are words in blood which leave no other trace
but of another self, another place
whose vanishings recur, but always out of sight.

                            *

we live a poem of when, but otherwhere
and othertime – like ivy spread on vines –
creep through our veins: chance, undeciphered signs,
runes and symptoms of things which are not there.

like shadows in a maze of moonshine
we black out, eyeless and pale in the night –
but when cold dawn dissolves us, hold on tight
together, two syllables that overspilled the line.

being alive at all
even hearing quite another call
is being blessed
in incomprehension, in difference;
and inner reflections on our innocence
are inattentive to our interest –

all to the good – beyond reason and rhyme
we live a poem of when, that otherwhere and othertime.

                                                                            freddie
                                                                            easter 2011