Divinity Road
(Redux)
Beginning at the top—where this old ring master opens wide his kerbs like arms inviting you to take the part-uncoiled helter-skelter of his half-a-mile— I felt this pull and crossed the darkened threshold. The truth is that I hoped your parents’ place was still along the bank of terraced houses turning to the right like fingers round a dimmer switch—though no such light revealed its number to my mind. It had been years since I last met you there and came inside to fall against the headboard and look out a window that was now one of a hundred curious lanterns passing over me. Or were those lanterns more like careless buoys submerging me in water spiked with dreams? (Intoxicating chills I can’t define— uncanny as the closeness of a foreign tongue—a sense possession by some ghost emotion—seasons morphing all at once—) And afternoons are fading later now, but can’t resist the evenings any more than we can fend off memories reborn as though to a vendetta… Yield to them like natives of some sunken demimonde and tremble as they deftly lift you down.



[cover image: Jack Yeats]