The Wave Hennets: Reflections
REFLECTIONS SEEN FROM ABOVE
Like diffraction rings, polished walnut, or gneiss,
rounding concentric bands link in a chain-mail
on the water, distortions of cloud that splice,
ravel, dishevel themselves in a lattice
of pale light, sliding endless scale upon scale,
glass-marble twirl within twirl, genesis
upon genesis, tinkering frenziedly,
each paradigm opaline opal let slip
as another winks into place, lucidly
tangled, chaotically neat, curve turned to blip,
as mimetic as surrealist dada.
All these mirror exactly where the waves are.
WALKING REFLECTIONS ALONG
Walk reflections along with you. What the waves
make of the moon: diabolos in silver
that are parting to oval pearls; or black staves
dotting with presto notes; or flattened turnip
that is pinched into artichoke; or rubber
discus that turns into dumb-bell. A quick blip
on oscilloscope screen that is opposite
all that it was now, now; skull become thigh-bone;
tragic mask into comic; drop in orbit
round a balloon; the sounds of a xylophone
struck at random — each fancy turns to servant:
they must change all their changing to your movement.
WAVE ROUNDELS
As the waves come this way, marbles, buttons, eyes,
pebbles-not-pebbles, gems, melting ball-bearings, beans,
humbug pieces of eight, peacock butterflies
fluttering luminous in the dark, targets
on a flag in the wind, flourished tambourines
seen through ribbed glass, glossy Dalmatians, goblets
in a furnace or fountain, here flash on bright
wavelets that share out reflections but only
in directions where real eyes and minds take light
raying by chance in instant trajectory
from a wind-lifted wave, a wind sun-stirred,
and make mirrors, in turn reflected in word.
WATER REFLECTIONS ON THE UNDERSIDE OF A BRIDGE
Look up there on the underside of the arch
where the reflections of the waves, searing lines,
white-hot edges and bars march and countermarch
over the unburning coolness of tooled stone;
or see gold rope that twists for a hold, untwines
threads and then snaps them taut, its sudden coils thrown
in an incessant netting this way and that,
playing for purchase on the solidity.
There's no stillness so active, no acrobat
madness so steadied by blockish sanity.
These mercurial scrutinies never find
what they search for. The well-set granite is blind.
CONTRASTS
See the holly reflect, while forsythia
glows, so from here the holly twinkles, the flower
lifts its lamps' yellow burnings, candelabra
brighter without candles. The yew is doing
both, the tips of its sprays alight with green power
they have absorbed from the sun, the wind strewing
silver slivers of fine-combed light deep within.
Down in the grass, the yorkshire fog, wide-bladed,
with its lenses of dew, translucent javelin-
jade in the sunshine, in the shade had faded
to a glistening chamois. It's a fiction
to take contrast as always contradiction.
REFLECTED SUNLIGHT
The sun juggles with molten nuggets, with gold
bubbles that wobble in a flash. The wind crimps
up the surface, its sparklers live over scrolled
silk, diamante pins-and-needles. A keel
wedges arrowheads wider, giving a glimpse
into a furnace where stilettos of steel
slip to stab at each other, burn livid green
brands on the eye. A thrown pebble: galaxies
made of novae. Then faint breezes damascene
blades with an inlay of fire. The stream carries
a dead branch through it all, unaltering track,
through mercurial blaze, of a dazzling black.
SUN ON WATER
On the water a chandelier is spinning,
sun on the ripples. Each facet is a sun
that is mirrored an instant. Now it's flashing
rising and falling together, like a swarm
of magnesium gnats, all as the waves run
here from the boat, there from where seagulls transform
them to chains being magnified to faintness.
Glittering rhythmic, chaotic, printing sight
with pink dots that are green when you blink. Restless
resolute dazzling, recording the waves' height,
depth, velocity, angle in perfect ones:
but from here, if I move, I see other suns.
DAZZLE AND AFTER-IMAGE
Cannot look at dazzle without a green
weal on the retinas, livid rash turning pink
on the sky. Take this scar-stipple on the screen
back to the splintering sun on melting gloss,
see it overprint ecstasy till you blink
palimpsest pain. Throw photo-flashes across
all these stills of itself till you hardly know
which is the memory and which is the real.
Are the mirrors the waves in a tremolo
passion of light, or does burned vision reveal
more than semblance alone, but leave one as blind,
as experience stamps a wound in the mind?
SUN-SCATTER
All these waves make the sun a chandelier,
shaking like castanets. The sun is still there,
as if seen through an insect's eye, or clavier
tinklings of trills around one note, but the drift
of the waves takes the sparks to the left. A stare
shifts them across to the right, a double rift
in the lights, as when columns of bandsmen thread
through their own band. It's a globular cluster
but its million stars take each other's stead,
randomly sure. Through this busy lustre
have been trying to see the sun — ought to save
all this strain and just see the sun and the wave.
LAMP-POST REFLECTED
There's a lamp-post reflected in the water.
Crankshaft, elastic. Scribbling line, erasing
what it's writing. See children's feet on rubber
castles go prodding thus. Sometimes it leaves part
of itself in a cusp or blot, but crazing
out in a black flash whatever its op art
had been flicking there: chains of oil, Henry Moore
instant montage, chorus-girl alternate bows
and recoveries, silk-ribbon semaphore
blurring the message, cuttings of dash, kowtows,
silver swagger and blush, missing entity
as it strives to maintain its identity.
REFLECTIONS OF A BARE TREE
There's a bare tree reflected in the river.
Some of its branches are wriggling to their ends,
some from end to beginning. The twigs shiver,
snapped into dream-skipping-ropes or -pendulums,
never rotting themselves with motion, idling
busily, entering blind deliriums
with the light in escape from their silhouettes.
Knots that are tying, never to be untied
since they never succeed. Serene pirouettes
skewed into fits. Unities that subdivide,
coincide. See the trunk shrug like a black flag
in the wind. Every entity a zigzag.
REFLECTION OF A TREE-TRUNK
Comic-choreographical reflection.
Trunk in the river. It puts its arms akimbo
and its knees knock-kneed, reverses direction
in a second. Turns toes inside out and back,
shuffling sideways. With hoops plays a pierrot
in a parody juggle; he has the knack
of just catching his failures. Is starved and fed,
dwarf and a giant, by turns. Balances poles
and then fumbles — are there on this toes instead.
Looks through his legs in amaze, then forward rolls
into sanity. Undeterred, on he raves.
What is plain — he survives, whatever the waves.
TWIGS REFLECTED
What's reflected is twig tracery. It's lace
melting in layers, netting that coils and smears
and then shrinks to a line. All moves to a pace,
crystalline wirings that stretch and rebound now
and then then and then now. Quick glue that adheres,
stringing in black across gaps — at once, anyhow,
snapping shut. Bouncing springs. Syrupy crotchet
knitted from cobweb. Chain mail made of rubber,
that is thinning and thickening in moiré
flux and reflux over the sky under water.
Is it tree by which you are able to see
all the waves, or else waves by means of the tree?
A RORSCHACH TEST WITH TWIN REFLECTIONS
Every wave is a Rorschach test. Images
made not alone, for take this one. There are two
of these branches reflected: each savages
each with a jabbing dagger but there's no wound,
only silken acceptance. Like a bamboo,
rings mar their smoothness, but the straight is ballooned
and excess made strait. Both monkey-puzzle
trees for an instant, with hair standing on end,
perhaps bristling with rage; then they both nuzzle,
deep in embrace, lost in a rhythmic blend.
Dancing solo, this sinuous, sleek carriage
of the body must waver into marriage.
REFLECTED SPACE
Right down there is the sky under the water.
When it is calm, the distance reaches to stars.
When the waves are in play, they all distort a
corner of space, merge it in circles, dandle
near and far, left and right, in parabolas,
toruses, Klein bottles, sailors' knots, handle
miles of cloud like a Möbius strip, the sun
forced to divide like a cell, the moon looping
silver arms round an earth-rooted tree, or spun
into an instant lamé with leaves, swooping
back and forth over space this never-crescent,
as if future and past became the present.
MUTATIONS
These are plaitings of barley-sugar, criss-cross
unweaving sweet waves. Those, flopping Dali coins,
their engravures a-wobble. Here on the boss,
there on the dimple a dazzle -- a bursting-
rocket carpet. And gleam-smoothing, folding loins
slip under silk. Silver foil always crinkling
to uncrinkle to crinkle. Heaviest lead
lifts in light harmonies to slide. A cheetah
has to sprawl. And the perfect circle must spread
where it must crescent itself back, to teeter
over what had to follow. Whatever name
takes the fancy of waves, it's never the same.
REFLECTION ON REFLECTIONS
It's a fraying and knitting at the same time.
Pulled out of shape, the branch like a rubber band
is snapped back where it was. Grinning pantomime
smiles, all these faces turn tragic, shaking heads
in a doleful negation that's turning bland
open-eyed even as it begins. Black shreds
of a manuscript jump to restoration,
then are erased as if history's parchment
were in short supply. Symbols in rotation
fleck an heraldic device, are innocent
and aggressive by turns. For what's there in fact
is how human observers manage to act.
INTERANIMATIONS
Swans, ducks, rowers disturb the tree's reflections.
Here in the middle, sky, twigs, trunk, branches, cloud,
sun and passers-by play at intersections,
never resolved, mazing their being, knotting
a macramé that loosens at once, all ploughed
over by furrows refusing the plotting
of a place, or an arras where the figures
tear the weave, always unable to settle
their true verisimilitude, or gestures,
waved in abstraction from arms, stirred in metal
sometimes bright as a furnace, hurting the stare,
no identity save in endless repair.
REFLECTIONS IN A DARK PLACE
Where the water is dark under the bank you
only see waves where they catch the light. Panting
like a dog after running, these peekaboo
blots, blinks and non-bright flashes slither and merge,
freeze and vanish, trip their own gallivanting
jigs with a slip aside, half-kiss to diverge
as if bored by the touch, shrink to singular
shape and then plunge into plurality,
jump like crabs and then frogs to reach globular
goals that prove disappointing, a vitality
that would seem to become fanaticism,
being marked by a constancy of rhythm.
AFTER SUNSET
It is just after sunset. The sky's ideal
peace is discussed by the waves. They are aiming
for an agreement, a pure reflection of real
heaven when all will have attained their desire
as decided by compromise, each claiming
where they are longing for lengthens the fine fire
of the sun's present absence, even though some
turn all unknowing a human lamp, or start
for the bank from no more than where ducks have swum
suddenly, frightened by a dog. They impart
to each other their views of a flame like flesh
in a colloquy knit in a glimmering mesh.
REFLECTION OF A LAMP-POST
There's a lamp-post reflected in the river.
Could be a rope that a child is twitching waves
with, except it can widen, shrink, and shiver
rings of itself in flashes sideways, except
a wave stops and goes backwards, splits in two, shaves
crescents and scales to left and right, as if kept
in a constant dissatisfaction with where
mirroring took it, gaping in ellipses,
at a snatch for a chance, or, caught in a snare,
thinned to intensity. It jumps as the breeze
stirs the nonchalant surface to flippancy.
An absurdity graphing contingency.
LAMP AT NIGHT
In the black of the night it is only light,
not a reflection. These musical partings,
coalescings, balloonings and shrinkings might,
given a knowledgeable eye, show the waves,
prove the water is there, confident chartings
read without thought. It's just memory that saves
the appearances. Ignorance would image
endless attempts at a lamp, dabbing sidelong
with a quicksilver paint, alien language
written in visible vowels, or a song,
a delirious litany, reckless rite,
spun from nothing but calm: a single white light.
NIGHT REFLECTIONS
Exclamation-marks, upside-down — lamps and their
traces on water at night. Now the wind's hand
writes in question-marks, signatures. The scripts tear
through themselves, burn their lines like flaming cressets
or the Ku-Klux-Klan crosses that try to brand
symbol to real. Through centuries alphabets
change in seconds, calligraphy wriggling to
feelings, and history lived in hours that seem
to old sufferers made up of hours, that new
ecstasy blazed up at once, a mortal gleam.
A bus crosses the bridge: waves mirror an age —
it is there and it's gone. a glimmering page.
STILL WATERS AT NIGHT
In the dark, saw the surface as almost still,
reading reflections. A lamp, sundering
with a gentle mitosis, made topaz spill
globes into ovals. A shining wall and door
out of reach behind diaphanous trembling.
Negotiations for peace where each forbore
to oppose the last soothing come from the dark.
Tentative silks eased their measures over calm
upon calm. Sighing faint as a watermark
fading as soon as breathed, its aim to disarm
the last pulse of emotion, make it the last
to be felt as a memory from the past.
MOTES
You see each of the motes swinging its own way:
this one a hammock; that one a sycamore
seed; another does somersaults. There's a sway
only revealed by its trick scintillation,
or by prickling to darkness. Right to the floor
we see the beam only by coruscation
of invisible dust, flashing, these distant
lighthouses, messages, like monads. Sparkling
morse, or rich constellations that are migrant
tribes or collapsing empires. Sudden darkling
of their thousands — a draught from the door. You find
that they all disappear when you shut the blind.