Not usury, but interest. The cup slowed in mid-raise,
the short whistle, hum, the little forwards shift
mark our intake of that non-physical breath
which our lungs mimic sharply, to cancel the gap in pressure
left by our self vanishing into its own alert -
A blink returns us to self, that intimate demeanour
self-repairing as a bow wave. What we have received
is the ordinary mail of the otherworld, wholly common,
not postmarked divine; no one refuses delivery,
not even the eagle, her face fixed at heavy Menace:
I have juices to sort the relevant from the irrelevant;
even her gaze may tilt left, askance, aloof, right,
fixing a still unknown. Delaying huge flight.
Interest. Mild and inherent with fire as oxygen,
it is a sporadic inhalation. We can live long days
under its surface, breathing material air
then something catches, is itself. Intent and special silence.
This is interest, that blinks our interest out
and alone permits their survival, by relieving
us of their gravity, for a timeless moment;
that centres where it points, and points to centering,
the centres us where it points, and reflects our centre.
It is a form of love. The everyday shines through it
and patches of time. But it does not mingle with these;
it wakens only for each trace in them of the Beloved.
And this breath of interest is non-rhythmical;
it is human to obey, humane to be wary of rhythm
as tainted by the rallies, as marching with the snare-drum.
The season of interest is not fixed in the calendar cycle;
it pulls towards acute dimensions. Death is its intimate.
When the Holland of cycles, the body, veers steeply downhill
interest retreats from the face; it ceases to instil
and fade, like breath; it becomes a vivid steady state
that registers every grass-blade seen on the way,
the long combed grain in the steps, free insects flying;
it stands aside from your panic, the wracked disarray;
it behaves as if it were the part of you not dying.
Affinity of interest with extremity
seems to distil to this polar disaffinity
that suggest the beloved is not death, but rather
what our death has hidden. Which may be this world.
Another complex Murray piece - the first two lines of the last stanza took
me some time to grasp, let alone remember - as did the long sentence
starting in the first stanza. But it does reward the taking of
time over it; even if it does leave you with an unanswered question.
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