PHILIPPE JACCOTTETWe like to believe our torment
helps heaven show clear. But torment
overcomes those wistful flights, and pity
drowns all, shining with as many tears
as night.
—hoyt rogers
Clouded Skies
—I am not convinced we shall ever make that journey
across the many skies becoming clearer and clearer,
carried away in defiance of all the laws of shadow.
I cannot see us as invisible eagles
for ever circling the peaks invisible themselves
in the excess of light...
(Picking up the broken bits of time
will not construct eternity. We learn to stoop, that is all,
like the gleaners. Now we see
only the massive ploughlands and the marks of the plough
across our patient tomb.)
—True, we have seen little of the sun lately
and it is less easy to hope under such an amount of cloud,
the mountain platform billows with too much fog...
(But how nearly destitute of strength we must be
if we let go for want of a bit of sun
and are incapable of shouldering
a fardel of clouds for an hour or so...
And we must be very naive still
to think ourselves saved by the blue of the sky
or punished by storms and night.)
—Where else did you think you were going on your worn feet?
Only rounding the house or crossing
a border—which?—again?
(The child dreams of going to the other side of the mountain.
A traveller may, and his breath up there
shows, as they say that the souls of the dead...