the mountain that cried itself to death

I

In the Plains of Emptiness,
the winds arrange the white sand into perfect circles.
Shifting intersections encode possibilities
as far as no eye can see, no machine can count.

I say it had to happen.
One day time looks the other way
and the patterns stumble upon their own demise.
What’s this?
No more waveform parlour game,
guessing god’s dice, with cardinals
and collapsing chance?
A dull rumble the only warning.
Suddenly curves of meaning distort.
Cant surfaces break up and recede
as continuity dies.
Everywhere jagged black edges thrust up:
invading, brutal and careless.
The sulphur bites. Numerical protests drown
in the screaming laughing crying groaning.

The Mountain is born.

II

He lay still.
Fissures flared, breathing the cold night.
His granite eyes blinked and studied the stars.
Is anyone there?
No-one returned his saturnic gaze.
No beast climbed his crags,
nor worm turned his flesh.
No kind wind stroked his old face.
Silence.
Silence.

One by one, the eunuch years passed.
They had no choice.
For a while, the cave songs sustained him:
Like a great black bear,
he danced to the beat of seasons;
lost in private jokes
and nursery thunderstorms.
Wait! Did he hear his sisters call?
Was that the gentle ridicule
of subterranean laughter
fresh, like poison in the veins?
No.
Just time falling softly
like dry tears.
The stone heart heaved and cracked.
Anguished steam escaped, cursing:
Oh mother of madness
- who cast me out,
expelled me from hell
like Lucifer’s reflection -
I can go no further!

And the Mountain began to cry.

Everywhere, the dew of despair glistened
on dark crystaline surfaces.
Drop by drop, life sadly departed.
In tiny crevices, tears welled up and joined
like mercury in slow dervish.
The reunion of sorrow became a river
endlessly falling home.

In time, the river began to bathe the plains
and teach the sand the ecstacy of touch,
snaking and sighing with new liquid breath.

But the Mountain was long dead.

III

The horizon announces their arrival.
Shapes dance in the heat haze –
two hundred or more, ambling, galloping.
The first sounds drift on the dust-filled air:
an insolent rondo of horns and tambours,
laughter and the bark of dogs.

The river waits.

Closer now. Men with tarred ponytails,
and large black hats
ride in circles, exhorting the herds.
The children make faces and piss in the sand.
A flash of dark eyes and broken teeth.
Women swirling in red and gold,
tiny bells proudly ringing their station.

The river rises; sings their bloodsong.
Closer still. Sweat drips on the tattoos
and talismans. Serpents who fly,
suns, moons, dragons smiling slyly.
Then, all noise stops.

They see the river.

With first nightfall, some gather by fires,
the old women leading the stories.
Tales of a magic tribe in captivity.
Sex potions, death potions, the outcast journey.
And always songs of the river.
The berries are brought,
ground to paste and passed round.
The hollow reed brings ancient dreams
of underground cities
and strangers with owlish eyes.

The river, listening, knows all these things.
grey light sparks from the labyrinth surface
and a host of ancestral shards
hook the eye, grip the heart
with a sad passion.

Tiger, oh tiger!
so long since I felt your tongue.

Days to years and the settlement grows.
Lust, love and loss dance round the lodestar.
Births, burials, a good first crop –
the river sustains them all.
Jealous lover, sighing, seeping into their homes.
Onto tables with spice and white flowers;
through the bright black hair
of shy bridesmaids;
across the old man’s wounds,
the child’s hurt face;
into every dream.
Every new, dying dream.

Leave tiger, leave!
Shun the saucer of factory milk.

Too late for some:
the water wheel greased and sniggering,
as metal magic crumbles the cards and stones.
Channels and graves both are dug.

Run tiger, run!
The star still shines.

The children are first.
Fuck this!
All these years for the sins of the father?
A horse and a knife. Little is packed.
Dust clouds their only farewell.
Gone, gone. Out of the dead lands
the blind bell tolls for no-one.
So soon, the turbine slows. Stops.
Projections gather in the shadows.
A flag still flutters
but the bird has flown.
Crops turn yellow
then grey.

IV

In the Plains of Emptiness,
the winds arranged the white sand
into dangerous arabesques.