I dreamt up a little verse —
and
in my mind, a circus-ground
of
sound, it neatly rhymed
before
this telling (inevitably)
brings
it worse.
In
fog, a weary one did
climb
an old stone
staircase,
spiralling, echoing
ocean,
up to the lamp.
There,
a stamp, as of
ideology,
glowed above
its
chamber doorway
(apparently,
marking
politics,
as well as
other
systems of love).
Strangely,
the lamp then spoke:
I,
whom navigators adore,
cannot
show safety
to
one ashore, but perhaps
you
sought a different.
A
different, yes, the weary
said. Normally I
seek
it left — but try not
to
be blind a-starboard
or
blind straight ahead.
Permit
a weary word,
therefore,
and tell me:
whitherwárd?
The
lamp responds to
tide
and time alone,
so
shone to the right
that
long, dark, cold,
foggy
night, revealing
warships
on the waves
and
massing troops
and
tanks on cliff-tops.
Which
made one search
forlornly
to the left,
unlit
as it was, and
shrouded
in the fog,
finding
almost nothing
save
the great black-blue
and
silver surf — which was
hardly
a discovery
in
and of itself.
And
so one searched
a
little longer, and a
little
longer still.
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