“In the actual, from which another life/Is straining to burst, to set out in navigation,/Or be swallowed by demons in the leaves.”
So much time thinking, staring at nothing—
The monstrous heads forming among leaves—
Jaws opening and closing in the swinging
Of the boughs—always the making of something
Other from what is, from what is presented—
And the mind following its own purposes,
Half-aware of the trees, half out at sea.
Memory, imagination, constant rumination,
Introspection—the idea always at the ready,
Arising out of the thing, a fabrication to replace
That which is here, and another notion
Ever at hand—and all this to what end?
Worlds upon worlds of fantasy, minute
After minute of involvement in the pretended.
Is there not sufficient here for engagement,
For immersion in the actuality of things—
Is it not possible merely to be and to see?
What use in the remaking of what is,
In making such faces of leaves? It is a breeze
Tossing its way through laden branches,
Perceived from a place of dis-attachment.
And yet all that is valuable seems to be
In voyaging through the uncreated, where
Nothing firm can be seen, touched, heard,
And—all without being—has existence,
Vitality beyond that of the body, attraction
Beyond anything given—where seeing itself
Is a force for escape, for the elsewhere.
What is it that presses at outing, is working
For its emergence, that would be freed
From the obvious? To ask is to drum
At a membrane, every thought a bulge
In the actual, from which another life
Is straining to burst, to set out in navigation,
Or be swallowed by demons in the leaves.
Harold Jones is a New Zealander, who was educated at Cambridge University, where he was awarded an Exhibition to read English. His poetry has been widely published in literary journals in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, and it has won the acclaim of pre-eminent critics and poets: among them, Ted Hughes, who wrote, “I hear a real voice, a real movement of mind cutting through resistances.” In the United States, his poems appear in Merion West and VoegelinView.
