One day Little-girl-she went out to walk with her mother. For some reason they walked right down the middle of the street; Now don’t you go too far ahead! warned Mommy-she
On ahead went Little-girl-she, sometimes looking back, making sure that Mommy-she was still there (“too far” nagging,) and Mommy-she was still there every time, until one time, one time she was not: Little-Girl-She knew, then and there, that she had gone too far, toofar …
Back down the street
she stared …
Back down
the street she
ran …
but when she got back to the spot, nothing was there, nothing but a manhole staring right back up at her, a manhole with no lid; a manhole with nothing but pipe ends staring up at her – little holes; pipe ends filled the mouths of the manholes: ugly little mouths, like a thousand manholes gaping …
Little-girl-she stood still and bent, and then she ran round and round, and then she zigzagged every way from manhole to manhole, from here to there, from what to where, connecting the manholes … connecting the dots and when she had connected all the dots all the manholes …
there stood a gigantic zigzaggedy Mommy-she and Little-girl-she screamed, screamed at Mommy-she
Unguarded song-thoughts, currents run below carrying to me, as water, a bubble playing at my mind, lifting a bobbing, near-conscious dream-thought: a creature emerging at line’s end: “I see your Face before me …” Visible now: at once risen, flirting, soon to submerge.
Visible now! “What Lonely Hours the Evening Shadows Bring …”
and I am seized, rocked awake by my own surging deep: that Voice! come-hither-waves beguiling: waves that Vanish on the dark side, where Shadows sing — and hours endure.
The torch I carry, the songs that lurk, I fear and act on cue to plug it with a cork, a bottle bobbing like a buoy, stopping-up the strains within — And as I do I say No more Voices! No more songs today!
