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NIGHT PRESENCE IN THE HARBOUR
By Quentin Smith
I awake halfway from a dream to a nacreous luster of the night
and am confronted by the massive presence of things.
Everything that I can see is invisibly stripped of its normalcy
And appears in an uncanny sheen as a pure presentness, open
Everywhere to my perception. White eyes are drawn
Out my claustral cabin to the amethystines occurrences:
And I see what I have never seen before,
watching wonderingly the incarnated dark:
A yacht glides no more in the glimmer
Of starsmoke that careens among its sails
Ropes of moon that are wound around its mast
Untighten into the ocean, creating phthalo blue half-pools.
On this floating hulk, clothes and stucco bars
Are burning quietly in low and purple flames.
A flute imprint is flashing on and off at space
While a crimson flag unfolds its valleys through the waves.
A black tusk is disseminating silence on the beach
As dark, umber browns mature slowly across the stars.
After eternal hours a dawn descends over the waters
And an orange island glows in the distance, an incon
of the day’s stormy Presence, which soon will overpower me
With oceanic nightmares of gales of beauty.
Written 1974 and 2002 |