Hours
A Poem
by
Duncan McGibbon
Contents
DAWN
Vigils
1. First Hymn.
2. First Antiphon
3. First Canticle
4. First Blessing
Lauds
1. First Psalm
2. Second Antiphon
3. Second Psalm
4. First Petition
DAY
Prime
1. First Invitatory
2. Second Hymn
3. First Prayer
Terce
1. Second Invitatory
2. Responsory
3. First Versicle
Sext
1. Third Psalm
2. Third Antiphon
3. Second Blessing
Nones
1. Third Hymn
2. Second Canticle
3. Commemoration
DUSK
Vespers
1. Third Invitatory
2. First Anthem
3. Second Prayer
4. Second Versicle
Compline
1. Last Anthem
2. Last Canticle
3. Last Petition
4. Doxology
Hours
Dawn
1. Vigils
First Hymn
My love
is a shaft of light
that shapes a statue:
its shadow cast,
a naked swimmer,
on untouched snow,
that falls through
thinning ice
to the pool’s melt.
First Antiphon
In the house
of the eye,
you step towards
the grate’s black ash,
as if you saw a glow.
Moonlight spills out
onto the cold hearth.
First Canticle.
White words, floating flakes,
they eddy in a place
that is dead
to swirl towards a beckoning.
This is the frosted waste,
the pond’s iron rim
on which blind crystals grow
Give my speech
leave to melt into silence.
Why pile on words
in this surfeit
of hard grounds?
First Blessing.
White hand of desertion,
you intrude your soft light
into an absent space.
I walk
past hollow excavations
and the suburb thunders;
then, a silence
that she does not speak.
2. Lauds
First Psalm.
Now rainfall soaks
houses of old brick
to affirm a helplessness.
On a building-site,
night-darkened poppies close.
Hour hands turn
into beating wings.
Blind friends of flight,
we await a last migration.
Second Antiphon.
Thunder storms threaten
beyond the city’s reach.
The homeless cannot return.
Lightning
brands the sky, a pale glow
that burns and turns away
a tensed
and cherished head.
Second Psalm
I shall fill
your house
with forgotten snow
piled in hourly corners.
This is a song
only for you,
who comes at night
to deliver a dream
with unguarded eyes
at the tear’s door.
First Petition
A flame burns alone.
Motionless, a mind-shadow
your face of love,
refuses all my pleas.
My petitions
made to the leafage of your eyes
become as dead as a feather,
twisting through
the dreaming air
to float alone
across a sleeping mask.
Day
3.Prime
First Invitatory
Born out of darkness
by the sun’s first touch
on stone humanity,
she seems to hesitate
on a memory
that silence breathes.
First Commemoration
As though you
cease to mourn,
you dance
before your friends,
a sand-skinned girl,
your red skirt spun
over the stone floor
as still as water at night.
The apple trees leap up
under the scudding skies,
which stretch over houses,
to settle with the earth,
dawn fresh on the lake.
First Prayer
The rising sun transforms the sky
An untouched light spills over the land.
to bare an ordered park,
to flood by a brown-brick wall,
to disclose the pond and linger
by a slender statue,
pelted by lichens and moss.
The shadow of a house
looms behind its darkened mass.
Cold marble and still beds
brood the cinder paths.
4. Terce
Second Commemoration
Morning assembles the day
before leaves that seethe,
brown, gold and green,
like applauding hands
in the springtime sun.
Slender-hipped girls
walk along in twos
wearing red and gold
past old, brown brick walls.
By the darkened house,
white-haired men
sit on benches where
tall boughs of cedars
spread out like spectres
towards the still pond.
Responsory
Black waters sink,
baring the immortal
nakedness of stone;
a proud outrage
that tells its love
under jealous silence.
First Versicle
The statue’s face
turns lighter
in this dense sun.
Its hair will never
soften by its side.
It seems to catch
its breath with the earth.
Reflected water
dapples on its
nameless neck.
5. Sext
Third Psalm
This absence now,
a life in lifelessness;
this marble paler.
White skin of silence,
it blinds all touch;
girl hardened in light.
Third Antiphon
The stone girl
waits for winter.
Blindness
makes sense
among roses,
deafness
among butterflies.
Stone that holds
summer warmth still
cannot know
the warmth of love.
Second Blessing
The water lies still.
A face appears,
a motion of memory,
austerely framed
in the questioning pool,
like a memory.
Sudden sunlight
has made it
wear a white
dress today.
A light, seducing figure,
gone to follow
the whim
of a speechless mouth.
6. Nones
Third Hymn
Summer’s sightless care is futile,
a blazing gradual of gold and warmth,
furling ordinary earth made desolate,
shadowed by too great a love.
A wall stands, yellow,
with hereditary scars of seasons.
To walk alone, anxious,
as another does,
accomplishing in double absence,
the God-like art.
Second Canticle
You would always turn
unhappy eyes to the sun.
It is a bitter memory,
the sadness of that glance.
Your beauty denies me
yet I have freed your life
for joy that is my loss.
My love lives
and you live in my love.
Third Commemoration
Softly, from a flower,
you blew away the dust,
as its whiteness lay blackened
by the city’s fevered ash.
As if from a distant holocaust,
a death from fire and air
had gathered there,
refusing my atonement
with an empty kiss,
the pleadings of my unspoken wish.
DUSK
7.Vespers
First Anthem
Worms crawls in darkness
towards the moistened earth of dreams.
A strong-winged bird is circling.
In the quiet of expectant day,
it flings harsh cries
through the air’s grey flesh.
A homeless body
shivers in sweated fear.
The dumb alone can hear.
Third Invitational
The wind scatters
cancered blasphemies
between the traces
of the spinney’s
winter bones.
Their phalanges
are whining,
as earth withdraws
beneath a sky
consenting
to an uncreation.
Last Commemoration
Under the whiteness of a water-lily
a hungry eel is twined.
The blue sky is mirrored
on the pond, complete and perfect.
Your scorn cries out,
like a private rite,
defying faith.
The spidery blackness
of rose bushes at dusk
shrouds the grief of the heart.
God’s silence pervades the pool.
Second Versicle
A starling streaks the clouding sky
above the orchards of decay.
Delicate shadows of trees
flicker softly over the white stone.
In this sad silence at least once
we shared the light.
8. Compline
Last Anthem
Far from the grip of thorns
and human voices
the evening pity,
a mistle thrush
has bound the heart.
The pool bears day no more.
Concealing clouds
cast the statue in
hurried shadow
against the spreading
fields of night.
The water lies dark
holding the setting sun,
a troubled flame.
Last Canticle
The garden lies still
under a hushed sky,
waiting for an end to silence.
Your shining eyes
grow dim in the shadow
and turn into the dark.
You once made a world
with a bare finger
laid over your lips
that grew warm
in their sunlit thread.
How can I leave
the house you made for me,
stillness of skin.
Drift back to your home,
wrecked clouds,
to your grief,
dried dew.
Last Petition
This waiting warns us.
Flee into stillness.
There you need not
turn away your face.
there you are alone,
with only the whisperings
of a great house
and the silence of the night.
Doxology
Then came the night rain,
spitting into darkness
the agony of ten hundred decades’
incompleteness.
The inner act that died
beneath the twisted
boughs of growth
lingers like a failing ghost
before releasing dawn
and falls away with
the aphasic wind.
12/8/68-25/11/68
Impressum
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 02.08.2010
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Widmung:
To Francois Cremieux-Brilhac