Ian Wedde
From The Lifeguard
1
You have to start
somewhere
in these morose times,
a clearing in the
forest, say,
filled with golden
shafts of sunlight
and skirmishes. A
little later
your itinerary will
take you past
weathered churches on
plains that stretch
as far as the eye can
see.
Their horizons elude
you,
not just because the
earth is circular
like the argument you
can’t bite off
and spit out, but also
because of your
restless
dissatisfaction with a
status quo that,
more and more, reminds
you
of everything you’ve
been at pains
to forget. ‘Return
all that stuff you borrowed
when my better nature
was in the ascendant!’
you bark,
but nothing ever comes
back
once it’s gone. To
your left, out west,
a bitter coast of
ghosts, shipwrecks,
vengeful expeditions,
short rations
and lies, lies, lies.
To your right,
on the suave east, are
the glittering lights
of private properties
as far
as the eye can see,
pink palaces
of coral bricks and
parades of people
you’ve watched before
so many times
you know they don’t
exist
except as the
repetitions
that fame and fortune
fabricate.
Bleak indeed are the
days
that smash themselves
against
the galloping thighs of
lifeguards
on the western flanks
of this god-forsaken place.
But sweet the dawns
that gild the shoulders
of giggling
vacationers
up all night
celebrating their windfall lives
on the eastern beaches
of islands whose tides
come in
and just as smoothly
go, like contented but
mediocre cover bands
from the patios of
three-star resorts.
Here, among the
useless, easy-to-please
recidivist idlers the
lifeguard lolls,
but out west his
counterpart
watches arms upraised
where the surf breaks
against its own backwash
and the maws of hideous
fate
gulp down every last
gasp of air
the unfavoured sinkers
ever hoped to breathe.
How can they meet,
these brawny
brothers in arms, the
gaze of one
running its tongue
across
the sweat-glazed
clavicles of celebrity,
the other’s eyes
averted
from redemption’s
hopeless odds?
There’s always a
middle ground,
a light-filled clearing
in the gloomy forest,
where all the
non-returns accumulate,
where arguments
conclude,
horizons cease to
recede
and a different silence
falls.
This is not the silence
that follows
the mediocre band’s
finale
or the silence
in the helpless
lifeguard’s mind
when that upraised arm
out at the breakers
drops from sight
and the surf’s
arrhythmic roar
pours into salty
gullies behind the dunes.
This is a silence you
may not hear,
the silent silence
when it’s too late
for the lifeguards
of west and east to
meet,
share a boast or two, a
drink,
some platitudes,
swapping yarns about
the shrieks of fear
and those of idle
pleasure
commingled like the
wrecks
of either coast,
nothing to distinguish
them
as their phosphorescent
glows go phut.
