The City
Mile after mile of black-paved streets,
endless people shuffling,
avoiding the human collisions
that signify the invasion
of their private space.
Loneliness, stalking
easy victims trapped forever
in the web of indifference,
souls lost in a wilderness of isolation
adrift and helpless in a sea of souls
unheeded by a million heartbeats.
And so I climbed Maumturk
Mountain of the Pass of The Wild Boar,
where there are no streets of people
but raw hard rocks beneath my feet
nothing all around me but clear cold air
and the restless cry of an unseen raven.
There I had space to breathe again,
to hear and feel a heart beat
and between the mountain and the sky
a windblown tranquillity enveloped me
in its soft wildness
and hid me from the gaze of men.
I was lonely there. And the raven was alone,
his cry drifting and echoing across the valley
far away above the empty cliffs of Maumean
til an answer carried clear to where I stood.
From the wildness of the mountain
my loneliness flew on raven's wings,
made harsh cries to the cliffs,
returned like echoes of the raven's mate
answering unseen.
Rain came, lashing in wild torrents
across the littered hills, sweeping them clean.
Loneliness, like the foaming streams of yellow water
gushed and tumbled over the bare crags
spilling into the clear empty air,
drifting away like a cloud
lost forever in the swirling misty silence.
Far down in the valley
it became the living stream
where dipper-birds live,
where blue damsel flies roam over lakes and pools
and hide in the sweet meadows
among cornflowers and red grass.
Loneliness vanished forever,
ripples on the streaming water
lost when a salmon betrays his lie.