Purgatory

TOM CLARK

PURGATORY

Some cows are screeching as if flames

So, as the train passes

A lowered glade of distant cottages

An imagined hamlet captures the god

Which in this phase of lessened brain

Is freed to contrive

A sum of meaning out of the briefs submitted by these

Miniatures

Called gestures.

And the embarrassment

Of all circumstances explodes into a blossom

Which these people's faces seem to implore by names

Of common affections and utilities

For more than love. When in reality

Will they become the ecstatic company

Of a previous desire for celestial simplicity?

Not only the real sun comments on the landscape

Of their vague presences, for every movement

Among them there is an answering movement from the film

Of meaning which is cast behind them as an idea

Supports any solidity and makes it bearable.

And when the flames start

Again all this slides into the past too,

Each act interred as a monument

To future remembrance, an unendurable

Desire to check this recession of their presences,

A passion to reconstruct everything as the plain

Procession of an undisturbable train of ideas

With no specific object or subject but such

A view forfeits everything to the truth

That each is furled in his own intention

As the secret parts of a flower are enclosed at night.

So they seem to sleep in their

Ways which should never be guessed

At-or thought of as anything but the insistent stifling

Lyricism of a seasonal plant

Whose leaves parch and begin

Their descent toward an inner

Austerity at the onset of hot days.

They are resigned, yet the flame strikes them

Also, and concludes their directions

By including them in its own

Clear conflagration, which is quiet

Amid the improbable carnage of crackling

Sounds that float to you down the air.

Disappearing into your existence as a sail

Into an incalculable horizon they are not harmed

But are judged by the vacancy which replaces them

With a huge music maintaining sureness amid disruptions

And permitting developments within the fabric of a composition

More sizeable and curious than the

Path of their conversation could ever have been.

And you, God, who are Love, and who

Are not, participate in this continuing

Ending you perpetuate, and are

This music.