night track

night track
august 2009

‘Moonlight, a Study at Millbank’ exhibited 1797 by Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851. Sourced from the Tate Gallery website.

there was a track
still is perhaps
running down
behind backyards
to the beach
a cliff-fall below,

in the dark
it was a windy
unsteady cave
and you braved it
with one hand
on the bank
to the right

pushing your feet
forward down grass
and clay
finding your balance
hardly mattered
in such darkness,

balance was a
myth of the day
long gone under,
you’d reach
the last leg of it,
there were wooden
steps and you
smelt then felt
the nearness
of ocean chopping

up under the
sandstone reef
at the foot
of those stairs,

the trees
as if
come afloat,
bunched waves
lapping branch
and dry cicada
shell,

the
theatre stage
in opened
curtains
of the
moon.

Copyright ©2009 Peter Le Baige.  All Rights Reserved

Click on the link above to hear a reading of the poem.  The accompanying music is from the 4th movement (Adagio) of Sinfonia no.3 (1981) by Russian composer Alfred Schnittke, and performed here by the Stockholm Philharmonic