The River Sound: Poems

WAVES IN AUGUSTThere is a war in the distancewith the distance growing smallerthe field glasses lying at handare for keeping it far awayI thought I was getting betterabout that returning childishwish to be living somewhere elsethat I knew was impossibleand now I find myself wishingto be here to be alive hereit is impossible enoughto still be the wish of a childin youth I hid a boat underthe bushes beside the waterknowing I would want it laterand come back and would find it theresomeone else took it and left meinstead the sound of the waterwith its whisper of vertigoterror reassurance an oldold sadness it would seem we knewenough always about partingbut we have to go on learningas long as there is anythingTHE CAUSEWAYThis is the bridge where at dusk they hear voicesfar out in the meres and marshes or they say they hear voicesthe bridge shakes and no one else is crossing at this hoursomewhere along here is where they hear voicesthis is the only bridge though it keeps changingfrom which some always say they hear voicesthe sounds pronounce an older utterance out of the shadowssometimes stifled sometimes carried from clear voiceswhat can be recognized in the archaic syllablesfrightens many and tells others not to fear voicestravellers crossing the bridge have forgotten where they were goingin a passage between the remote and the near voicesthere is a tale by now of a bridge a long time before this onealready old before the speech of our day and the mere voiceswhen the Goths were leaving their last kingdom in Scythiathey could feel the bridge shaking under their voicesthe bank and the first spans are soon lost to sightthere seemed no end to the horses carts people and all their voicesin the mists at dusk the whole bridge sank under theminto the meres and marshes leaving nothing but their voicesthey are still speaking the language of their last kingdomthat no one remembers who now hears their voiceswhatever translates from those rags of soundpersuades some who hear them that they are familiar voicesgrandparents never seen ancestors in their childhoodsnow along the present bridge they sound like dear voicessome may have spoken in my own name in an earlier languagewhen last they drew breath in the kingdom of their voices