Australian Cantos

I

Each light I see represents several lives
One to turn it on, one to install it, make it, sell it, conceive it…

The car rolling past disturbs the night
What justification do you have to interrupt it’s repose?

Walker below me, what is your story? Why do you now run?
Do you like poetry?

Even the waves beat solemnly in my hearing.
Where is the nearest soul that swims in cold waves?

The house to my right has many windows not lighted.
What manner of man sleeps in those rooms tonight?

The tiny moving dot above me is filled with people
Each one of them is far from home, but none as far as I.

II

At last the ferry rolls in, so strange in the blackness
Humming mechanically it cuts the waters most unnaturally
It too is full of expectant souls
All of which have come here to fulfil some purpose
And I will never know what that purpose is.
Is there one soul there as lonely as mine?
Does no one look out the window and think:
In all those lights, of which I am but one, so immeasurably insignificant,
Is there one soul as lonely as mine?
And gazing into the stars, so inconceivably far away,
Does one creature look back at me, and sigh, and stop writing

III

The sky is clouded to-night.
I have been sitting here since the last ferry left until the new one arrived
And watched the lights before, and the darkness too.
But I have failed in my simple ambition.
I have been unable to feel my own insignificance.

An uncommon ambition, I concede.
Intellectually it is so obvious as to be blinding.
That I should be so caught up in myself,
So assured of my own significance
Scares me deeply.

The stars have become visible
But as I am no closer to grasping them
I am no closer to grasping
How far away they are.

IV

The ferry glides over the water like a spectre
And yet it hums, and pounds its engines
Its lights illuminate brief stretches of water.
Soon it is just a collection of lights flying over the waters.
Slicing through the water strangely,
Unnaturally fast it takes itself away from me.
Alone in this harbour it disturbs the nights silence
Soon it is gone, and I am alone again.

Tues, 11th April 2006 (ish)
not quite sure why this should be one combined poem, but i did write it all in one sitting. Probably needs more polish, but I dont want to overwork it.