An Orchestral Depth

Music: William Doyle Terrible inventions are these circular things Absolute inevitable bliss Paramount in certain kinds of enlightenment If half-remembered venom persists Something in the way that I turned my head Rattled all the love to my neck There it sat for days in anonymity Now it has a note to be expressed That's when all the colour turned an orchestral depth Even magnolia flourished Morning made a hole in the sky Of a deep mauve gradient Doors upon the landing were quietly shut Pianos dropped in dissonance to their deaths Roads and gardens bathed in a street-yellow light Dawn laid out a hymn sheet and took a deep breath But the actual fabric of the places where I learnt about the fabric of places has remained uncannily consistent. Stasis is still an option, and it’s the one this part of England has chosen. The world of my childhood hasn’t vanished; it’s a ghost that has no struggle to be seen behind the coarse facades that have been superimposed down the years. Behind the trees that it is now a crime to chop down, because trees have rights, vistas don’t, many views that I recall have been lost to arboreal correctness. Beneath the dismal hutches that squat on edgelands that were dismal, but exciting too. My midget former self is also all too visible. I behave like him, I amble for the sake of ambling, at snail pace. I too regard suburban avenues and river banks, backstreets and woods as the best free show on earth.