Storm raging, rain,

a roaring wall enveloping us at home,

your pacing up and down

from kitchen to hall,

on the table the two phones side by side,

the landline and your mobile,

both mute by now.

You gaze at them, at the window, at the thick

curtain of water. Nothing can be done.

Roads and railway flooded, the motorway

a stilled snake of a queue stuck in the mud,

and the rustling of voices in the cars

and silences and stares and lightning,

the sky dark grey-green, the pressing

of the clouds’ swollen, bruised fingers.

You turn the directory pages

while a lightning-bolt booms and rattles the windows,

maybe, you say, they will answer at this other number,

you deal –another recorded voice- try later, it says,

same message as before, as ever,

the recorded words hanging in the air

more silent than silence.

You don’t sit down, hooked to the two phones

as your last assets, you take one in your hand,

put it down, then the other.

In their silence, in the silence of the house

and the crashing, the swarming outside

I sense we

are now praying, with no words,

with effortlessly suspended breaths,

questions and hopes sieved

through the rain’s roar,

in the wait that blurs frames.

                    Night

Routine rites. You pace in the hall, so neat

your shadow walking behind you,

your alert wake.

You check and double check every room

and window, and your favourite shutter,

the one you love leaving slightly open,

eyeing a string of stars in its chink.

You see yourself, the king,

blowing out the candles, taking

each in your hand, fitting

each blow in a heartbeat.

Tomorrow. At dawn there will be

the assault, you must win.

You wait for the last candle,

you touch it in its niche and hope

it will prepare the right dream

with the tassel you miss.

Your queen sleeps in her chamber,

in her slight breath-trickle

the running draughts pass, appeased.

In bed you wait for sleep,

you invoke its jewelled sea,

its magnified fish scales, you need

to be swallowed in the sea’s manes.

Hours tick. Not many, and you wake up

in the middle of it, startled

by your own unknown, the dark

pounding like hanging mud

and a scorching tiger’s stare in your marrow,

yourself, what doesn’t leave you.

And it’s dawn. You wake up with the well-known

all right, a whisper, a popping bud

once more giving the all-clear.

While the thin necklace of your queen’s

breath in her sleep hangs

with the first light’s lips.

Your fear is intact, a solid cloud.

But you are glad and ready too,

you listen to the sweepers shuffling on the stones,

their brooms wide like the surf,

and the whining and banging iron

of the opening doors,

and, sudden and close,

a lonesome twitter like a sword.

You know it will dig out the sun on time.

So you get up and smile

with the glad fear that maybe is courage.

          On the Mountain

On the rise now, on the way up, the first few metres

the hardest, when breath hasn’t yet

found its tune, before the heat on your back,

before the contrast of the cool air with your sweat.

Body bent forward, gaze upward, rising

furrows on your brow with the hint of a smile

as if the long jagged top were a mother,

head constantly confirming your pace with a nod.

And looking at your side the extending plain

while you get higher, the mauves, ochres and greens,

the patches your hand would like to press,

the quilt of the land.

Somewhere along this path one day my father stopped,

fingers pointing at each village and distant tops,

you still see his stretched arm, the tension in the voice,

the rite of naming each spot, “see this, see that”,

as if just by their naming, in the wind gusts,

he could possess them.

It’s as if you have always been here, wanting a long

autumn stretch, shuffling into the thick carpet

of oak leaves with their rounded and jagged

outlines, rich like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle.

Rich like earth’s shredding skin, this dry

gentle rain under the branches.

Body bent forward, still going forward.

Being still in its own going. Shredding the fundamental

silence in its voice. Never looking forward

any descent.