| The Poetry of Richard Sansom Published by The British Sansom Society | |
 
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| Voyage I Recalling those yellowing walls filled with pictures of impossible countries, shelves of never-touched books, the piano standing in its sheen of dust, its open pages of Clementi, the Chinese vase of wilted flowers, it is possible to feel betrayed into believing that one has heritages to proudly take into tomorrow, a blood-line of meaning, when it’s really only the creosote of dark moments . . . . . . a face bending down, toward the margins of my hands connected to a bowl of light, a still-shot, a negative of reality posing as a what-is event, lingering, poised hands reaching, parted lips speaking, her bosom, suspended, globes that never nurtured me when I was newly shaped by the hurricanes of worldly fact. . . . and he, a distant countenance figured by smoke and the debris of uncaring attention, leaning back in a somnolent suspension, where he lives between this woman and his daily life. I am not there. But I did arrive. They gave to the earth, my cricket sized existence. . . . beneath white covers, behind the white bars of the crib, faces dropping liquid smiles, and large hands moving in great circles, the rumble of meaningless sounds from cavernous mouths, the breathing from vast lungs, the new odors and wavering orbs of speckled eyes, opening and closing like gates . . . II I wish to redesign them now, paint them with my chosen colors, etch them with my hunger, cast them like bronze with my own nobility, be able to recall them sitting in white wicker lawn chairs reading Proust or Mann, smiling with a sated conviction at my possibilities, . . . not theirs. But I can imagine them into my existence as I choose, loving with exalted purpose, forcing me to swell up like a giant, growing me into the fullness of my special humanity, with heart and mind circumspect with inchoate vision. Perhaps this therapy is real, it may be cures for this disease. They may appear before me, naked and flawed to the point I can feel a sympathetic tinge. Perhaps they too were busy dreaming their what-might-have-beens, suspended in a forgivable ennui . . . | |
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