THE PEBBLE AND THE WOUND

Μὴ κίνη χέραδασ – Sappho  

Patiti Point, Te Mata Hapuku,

Cobden Beach, or Cosy Nook;

wherever,

it doesn’t matter particularly

so long as there is a white noise of surf

and a visual chaos of pebbles

where I can shrink down into being a pebble

as my footsteps crunch away into the distance.

The pebble being worn smooth and round,

scentless, clean, mute, a dignified miniature

of Brancusi or Epstein in marble,

being memoryless, being cool and spherical

in the hand, the ultimate

mineral solipsist, sibling of silence,

closed, protected,

the perfect entity.

The pebble, when cast, can also wound,

the beach is a border of wounds between sea

and land.

The wound distends into being, a crimson star

flowering in its own darkening sea,

is a word, is the I.

The white stone is veined in red

is a constellation, a galaxy of arterial

rubies throbbing out into the void

with each pulse

a study in all the possibilities of red

like a jolly Vibert cardinal

the shadows move through into the world

the ancestral shades are born

dynastic pain, a red dawn

Two wounds and a gash

make a face

and a wound smiles with its jagged edges

makes a moue

wounds speak

if you have a will to listen

they sing in a billion-strong choir

and their language is pain

the pebble shatters

To speak of both wounds and pebbles

is a tautology,

both bind the world together.