Wayless
This poem may be longer
than the one you were expecting.
As it ends in the ground
why not lie there now,
try a grave posture? Or undress
slowly, carefully folding
each garment, laying them neatly
to one side. You complain of the cold.
Stepping naked into a poem
of this length isn’t ill-advised.
Obviously, you’ll be able to pick up phrases
to wrap around your nakedness.
However many words slip past you,
however many images you reject
something will come to hand.
A long and winding swaddling band
of words would be restricting wrapped
around you, so I’ve laid it here
a little like a path
a little like a map
whose contours spiral and meander
topographically untrue.
This landscape needs no theodolite.
It needs you. Don’t follow
the thread of the labyrinth.
It’s a little like an echo
which never stops rebounding
from the surfaces which never stop
appearing as you glance around.
You need to wander in
among the glancing blows of sound.
A path would be a meaning,
a beginning and an end.
I’m offering you a poem
to enter in and wander round.
The meaning’s in the folding
of the ground around your feet.
So. You have a map which
they sewed together for you
taping the fraying edges.
It’s not what it was. You know that.
It belonged in your pocket
folded, fingered, a little
sweat seeping through it.
It’s not the same now.
Sure, sit on the ground.
It’s solid enough. It doesn’t vanish
when you stop walking. Sit, unfold
the sweat-stained paper. What matters
is its feel, taste, smell.
It won’t go back in your pocket.
You can refold it, but its shape
and weight have changed. You might as well
pocket the fold in the ground. No.
The paper stays where you laid it
decays. You can get up
or lie down. You can ford a stream
because now this is getting real.
It doesn’t matter who invited you
to come in and wander round.
I’m not abandoning you. I can’t
define your world, describe
your linearity or coax
your heart out of hiding.
None of this is for me to say.
Yes, it’s getting dark. Yes,
there’s mud. You were misled?
Who was leading who? That gash.
Probably barbed wire. It tears
the land into strips. Almost comforting,
the blood. You say I told you how
it ended? Why did you believe me?
It ends all over the place. Why
believe me now? Where your nerve
ends, you begin, at the interface
of touch. Go on, stay still, turn back.
You’re not alone. Some of the others
carry a handful of mud. I’m folding
the stanzas like a concertina.
and handing them to you.
Chris Fewings is currently writer in residence at Balsall Heath Library in Birmingham (UK). He blogs at www.chris.fewin.gs . His alphabetical novella, A Glossary of my Grandmother, is available as an e-book.