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GARDEN OF CLOUDS

(To Dylan Thomas)

 

Your life had become
A speeded-up film,

Moving too fast, sickly,

Each frame flashed by,

Too quickly, not settling
At all in the scrapbook

Of your mind. Your voice

Was left behind, in rooms
Of strangers sipping wine,
Their politeness like fresh paint
Drying on walls.

 

You were always traveling,
In a plane, a bus or a car,

Yesterday was always lost
Above a garden of clouds,
In a station of tired faces,

On a table in a café
On a never-ending road.

You felt so alone, your past
Blocked off by each city’s dream
Of sky-threatening stone.
Your dramas drowned in each smile.

 

The ash of your words
Smouldered in the books
That they bought and shelved
In their unknown lives.

You were losing yourself.
Your emotions rode

The conveyor-belts of their eyes.

You got as close as a lover
With your pockets of songs.

You wore the garments of death
With the laughter of a clown.

 

At night, when sleep played
Games with your soul

And the traffic smothered
Your slow pictures of love,
New poems dripped into
The wounds of your life

Below the garden of clouds.

 

 

Peter Thabit Jones

http://www.peterthabitjones.com/