A Map Of Melancholy Poem by Kevin Kiely

To P.M.B.

1
The cut aches beneath eyelids of sky a glimpse of cherry red
dusk light distorted through water in a glass, trees are sickly yellow
in winter’s killing ice, only the season of Zanna―symphony of trees swirl
coiling uncoiling her hair, shoes nickel into silver along Rue Tillich
in the purlieus of Rosenzwieg Strasse within walking distance of fountains
spray can graffiti, slick kitsch colour: tone koan but there is no continuing
city, not only people but things get broken, elevators from the underworld
to the bright vaulted halls where you clamber with others noisily, wearily
while she stops in the conspiracy of streets mends a broken fingernail
with a tiny brush and polish, twinned with each tree she passes
through the park blonde hair subsumed in pink blossom, blown
like strawberry cotton candy, her laugh at playful songs of love because
for her it opens in the spectacle of a thousand starlings flying
and her rowan berry lips open to smile in a sunbeam focus
for to touch her heart is to feel life flowing as the fiery arrow
of sunrise above a sleepless ocean of milk and is by the action
of her hands suspended raised towards you and the trees move in turn
moving sunlight and the seashell teeth that change into pearls
while her voice ends the sonic of suffering where the extremity
of feeling pours out flooding the senses and dreadlocked anxiety
opens into what life, what bliss. The photograph at the Causeway
of her diastemic smile against the breaking surf on rocks where
metaphysics lose out to the sensual and she owns the heaving
ocean and the jagged bedrock grotto that enshrines her cult, so you
cannot think within this liquor of confusion yielding to laughter
and what is her smile, she will not answer every persistent
question directly, she wants it now and you better know what it
is, the information is given in smiles, read them carefully and
most of all life tells you what you see is perfect but as soon as you
reveal this she will shrug ruefully in the ultimate sport and would
you ever want it to end. In solitude such is theophany and solitude
is stronger than songs about it, deeper than contemplation
but who would neglect her for solitude.

2
I know that to reject most of what we are told will seem elitist
but when she talks there is more than plenitude beyond nature’s bounty
I don’t believe anymore in soundbite it is abused, I don’t accept your rejections
of the sacred that I have tasted in her eyes and her voice which you fake
in your many presentations. Go ahead manufacture your news & things but I may
spit on most of them because we are fleeting, you shall not lead me next
door to doom you shall not make me fear what you honour.
I know our limbs are the cage and this song is free and felt from inside
outside your strictures: this song is given forever by her to me, so world
I say to you: go on your way without her or with her for she will be known,
the one untorn seam and though you don’t believe me, the untorn mind
your world is your own in everything you sign but it is less than schedules
or crumpled cups, you will never destroy my darling: you will never
break me again in this life and her eyes shine at night beyond car lined
avenues of despair, call this fanciful but it is true and holy as the truth
that we are all one among the melancholy world of tears and woe
our joy resounds in longing chains of loneliness and her shadow
in pain shows the world transfigured beyond gloom.

3
She is alive more than time’s apparent movement taking me with her
more than time ever shall; life is not life as when travellers exhale and ask
how much time have we got? I don’t ask. I don’t ask anything because she
is in the Holograph and the Melancholograph, resplendent archive
where time is a dimension an abandoned vista of cities on a sea
bound by elliptical landmass linked to wider seas, therefore watchers
from deep spaces have pity on us when the night is long and laden
with luminous laptop windows and real pain below the forgotten livid sky
looms and does not regulate, for even the zillions of stars on threads
smoulder into powder and she shall not, she shall not leave me alone
for dear life is not tawdry and living is not a feather plucked for extinction
nor pain itself longing in purification of the blood in its own seascape towards
vision which renders the pigeons flying from the seawall a visual quotation and
the herons on the deepest rocks looking out to sea some salt encrusted mural
on a medieval ship for if you had found the lost map with her the geography
beyond the maelstrom and with widening gaze accepted in formidable strength
that we are weak, we are dying, we are cinders already clinker less in sound than
castanets and when she turns to gaze into your eyes urgent as the time of night
in the airport throng where lone purpose and intent, smoke-rooms foggy
with swirling glass and the ouroborus invisible visible, orchestral melancholy
trains speeding full entering the M-tunnel, the hem of the sea is not beautiful
then, neither lace nor silk desert dirt sand, threadbare grass oasis littered rivers
in flood, the furrowed oceans of silent fish who stare aimless
through their ceiling at the sun.

4
Nature hides mysteries in water and in the oceans that potentially reveal
the spectacle, insubstantial to the spectator publicly watching in disbelief
as mercurial moods calm crazy hollow displace and obliterate
steadier modes of thought grimy blades of grass framed in ice
and sculpted ice demigods tight shoes bearing their feet poised
on the steel ridged steps still targets, time-beings, ghosts, limp hands
on rubber handrails not always elliptical, moving these creatures
after such a night, in clothes from stage screen and store to the percussion
of turnstile check-out, adagio of talk, the partial resolve of the known transaction
coffee bakery aroma of kiosks, luggage on wheels, life’s hectic spiel, serious gloomy
sorry faces mocked by weeds and vinegar rain. There is only one journey
and it is to her smile, to the angel threaded strands of her hair in the sun
to a cup she graced with her mouth and tongue, to a grove of cherry trees
she planted for peace, to her house on a hill above a divided city where she looked
on killing, and her eyes and actions kept a glow beneath the darkness. No―no―no―
no―no, I tell you I have been within her sacred grove and we shall not be burned
like the combustibles when the grey smoke of bitumen throbs among
the vertebrae of flames and the stench is hell, for to be touched by her
is healing and in an instant all pain, all death, all longing disappears
and in her eyes and voice is the resolution of the quest while in her kiss
a true home emerges for this earth that baffles astounds, repels
and yet astonishes in its chant, fix your eyes on her gaze and this is
easily done, ask nothing of her as the tar barrels burn and the city
is shaken in quakes as if time stops the ripples of blood that form in pools
it is not blood it is wine from the vat, no more no more, every blown leaf
and flower calls you out to her: all is resolved we have not been created
for horror solely and the cause only known in part so let the complete
resolution in your eyes merge with her rippling smile within without
while nature shines and we will know, let me repeat we will know before
we die: it is told in the pools of her eyes into which I move down behind
a waterfall to a volcanic marble entrance that opens where starlings beat
warmth and music from their wings, the goat chews grass for its green wine
cherry trees cast their fruit into baskets, the stage set house where she comes
to the window wild, wide-eyed, beckoning and my name on her open lips.




Note: (i) An early draft of John Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ begins: “The cut aches…”