Ian MacLeod

Ian MacLeod Poems

The Best Poem Of Ian MacLeod

Red Sand, Buried Seashells, The Chuckle Of God On The Wind Like Footprints In Stone

Time is a tool in the Hands of God;
With it, by it, all things are shaped
Like marble or clay
Beneath the Hands of the Master.
There are places upon the Earth where
We have been for so long, the marks
Of the hands and feet, small and - different -
From our ancient childhood, before we wore
This name, these memories, these hopes,
Remain in the stone we shaped with
Our passage,
As those places shaped us, leaving
Their marks in our changing shape,
And substance,
Both flowing, becoming, over
The accumulating weight of slowly lengthening days
As the moon retreated, having carved its own cycles in
Our now-smooth bodies and
Our ever more turbulent dreams
Has changed us.
What are we now?
The ground where we stand has been fought over
So many times, the wonder is that
The very stones, the sand, the scant water
Are not a glutinous red, that
The air does not echo
With cries in a wordless tongue we no longer know.
Each time, we think we do something new,
Take what was never ours before, but
We carry it just beneath our skin, the association is so old.
I wonder – does God laugh at our short memories, lost ‘twixt each stroke
Of the Master’s shaping tool –

Or weep?

I weep.

There is always someone whose
Memories of the path behind us, whose utter
Certainty
Of the path before us IS –
So certain, that any price paid by any or all is not
Too much
To pay for conformity, which
The Certain One never sees
As the perfect, monstrous, deadly opposite
Of all we paid to find this place.

Someone would always return to a beginning that never
Was, dragging us all along perforce,
Throwing out every thing, every one,
That doesn’t fit the fantasy.

Some one would always decide for all, and
Too many
Would allow it and follow without protest – fall
Back down the damned mountain, ignoring
The torn bodies and souls of those with,
Behind, and
Over
Whom we climbed, as though none had value.
As though none of us have value.
And so again, over the red sand, the buried seashells, we hear the chuckle of
God on the wind, like footprints in the stone beneath us, left
On the last trip up.

Damn them.


Ian MacLeod
June 17th,2006
Oregon

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