HOW IS HAVING FAILED

by Frank Golden

How is having failed
akin to silence after birdsong
or the turned pustulence of hanging fruit
or the pressure of a thumb
in the sternal notch
jolting when the rattle
in death’s brittle evening
shakes
before finally
stopping?
Such credences in death
this coming home
in bleak mid- winter
in decline
flesh run to seed
fingers dusting the turquoise mould on tangerines
Fado notes yielding on the dative tone.
Death in all its homely conviviality
becoming part of the homecoming
part of the acknowledgement
of cruel losses and uneven loves
all of life’s livid ruptures held in the palm
the river’s eden and the river’s darkness
cupped and tasted
willow trees and alder in a cascade
of sadness and prophecy.

How is having failed
part of the measure of walking
to and from the bloom lake
in the shadow of Brent geese movements at dusk
the sky lit with kindled articles of faith
an architecture of unearthly fire
what was dreamed
or delinquently eroded
or rendered as dust
in the aftermath.
The concurrences of dead and dying things
the mute scavengers
the stark prayer and remembrance
this box of damp seeds rotting.

Finally, there is nothing
in the common panic
of not being
of not being the achieved self
one acknowledged as a
juvenile enflamed mission
that does not perish
that will not perish.

In the shadow
of a bleak house
life memorised as
blighted or benighted
or
touchingly quidditative
orchestrated by
a shadow hand
standing off to the side
standing
for every attached and unattached thing
sustaining or voiding
by virtue of the light or darkness
in its scale.

So much
of what we are
and have been –
the hand waving or striking
in the rear window
lips moving to lips
or blooded on teeth
her palm licked slowly
or not at all
the tongue gorging
on the illusion
that what we have been
signifies
when all that really signifies
is this ochre coil of lichen on stone
this breathable air
this fall of rain on winter lake water.