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1. The Undercover Man
Here at the glass -
all the usual problems, all the habitual farce.
You ask, in uncertain voice,
what you should do,
as if there were a choice but to carry on
miming the song
and hope that it all works out right.
Tonight it all seems so strange -
my spirit feels rigid, my body deranged;
still that's only from one point of view
and we can't have illusion between me and you,
my constant friend, ever close at hand -
you and the undercover man.
I reflect:
'It's very strange to be going through this change
with no idea of what it's all been about
except in the context of time....'
Oh, but I shirk it, I've half a mind not to work it all out.
Is this madness just the recurring wave of total emotion,
or a hide for the undercover man,
or a litany - all the signs are there of fervent devotion -
or the cracking of the dam?
It's cracked; smashed and bursting over you,
there was no reason to expect such disaster.
Now, panicking, you burst for air,
drowning, you know you care
for nothing and no-one but yourself
and would deny even this hand
which stretches out towards you to help.
But would I leave you in this moment of your trial?
Is it my fault that I'm here to see you crying?
These phantom figures all around you should have told you,
you should have found out by now,
if you hadn't gone and tried to do it all by yourself.
Even now we are not lost:
if you look out at the night
you'll see the colours and the lights
seem to say people are not far away,
at least in distance,
and it's only our own dumb resistance
that's making us stay.
When the madness comes
let it flood on down and over me sweetly,
let it drown the parts of me weak and blessed and damned,
let it slake my life, let it take my soul and living completely,
let it be who I am.
There may not be time for us all to run in tandem together -
the horizon calls with its parallel lines.
It may not be right for you to have and hold in one way forever
and yet you still have time,
you still have time. |
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2. Scorched Earth
Just one crazy moment while the dice are cast,
he looks into the future and remembers what is past,
wonders what he's doing on this battlefield,
shrugs to his shadow, impatient, too proud yet to kneel.
In his wake he leaves scorched earth and work in vain;
smoke drifts up behind him - he is free again,
free to run before the onslaught of a deadly foe,
leaving nothing fit for pillage, hardly leaving home.
It's far too late to turn, unless it's to stone.
Charging madly forward, tracks across the snow;
wind screams madness to him, ever on he goes,
leaving spoor to mark his passage, trace his weary climb.
Cross the moor and make the headland -
stumbling, wayward, blind.
In the end his footprints extend as one single line.
This latest exponent of heresy is goaded into an attack,
persuaded to charge at his enemy.
Too late, he knows it is,
too late now to turn back, too soon by far to falter.
The past sits uneasily at his rear,
he's walking right into the trap,
surrounded, but striving through will and fear.
Ahead of him he knows there waits an ambuscade
but the dice slip through his fingers
and he's living from day to day,
carrying his world around upon his back,
leaving nothing behind but the tell-tale of his track.
He will not be hostage, he will not be slave,
no snare of past can trap him, though the future may.
Still he runs and burns behind him in advanced retreat;
still his life remains unfettered - he denies defeat.
It's far too late to turn, unless it's to stone.
Leave the past to burn - at least that's been his own.
Scorched earth, that's all that's left when he's done;
holding nothing but beholden to no-one,
claiming nothing, out of no false pride, he survives.
Snow tracks are all that's left to be seen
of a man who entered the course of a dream,
claiming nothing but the life he's known
- this, at least, has been his own.
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3. Arrow
Stub towers in the distance,
riders cross the blasted moor
against the horizon.
Fickle promises of treaty,
fatal harbingers of war, futile orisons
swirl as one in this flight, this mad chase,
this surge across the marshy mud landscape
until the meaning is forgotten.
Hood masks the eager face, skin stretched and sallow,
headlong into the chilling night, as swift as any arrow.
Feet against the flagstones,
fingers scrabbling at the lock,
craving protection.
'Sanctuary!' croaks a voice,
half-strangled by the shock of its rejection.
Shot the bolt in the wall, rusted the key;
now the echoes of all frightful memory
intrude in the silence.
What a crawl against the slope - dark loom the gallows.
One touch to the chapel door, how swiftly comes the arrow.
"Compassion" you plead,
as though they kept it in a box -
that's long since been empty.
I'd like to help you somehow,
but I'm in the self-same spot:
my condition exempts me.
We are all on the run, on our knees;
the sundial draws a line upon eternity
across every number.
How long the time seems, how dark the shadow,
how straight the eagle flies, how straight towards his arrow.
How long the night is - why is this passage so narrow?
How strange my body feels, impaled upon the arrow. |
3. 矢
折れた樹が彼方にそそり立ち、馬上の者は枯れ果てた荒野を駆け抜ける
地平線に抗って。
気まぐれな交渉、戦いの前兆
無益な祈りが、この流れの中で一体となって渦巻く。
この狂った追跡、この高まり、泥沼の風景のもと
意味が忘れ去られるまで。
狂おしい顔を頭巾が覆い
皮膚は引きつり、黄ばんでいる。
凍てつく夜へと一目散に
どんな矢よりも速く。
足は敷石を踏みしめ、指は錠の在りかをまさぐる
護りにすがりついて。
「聖地じゃ！」しわがれ声がつぶやく、拒否されるショックに
ほぼ窒息しながら。撃たれた壁のかんぬき
錆びついた鍵、今やあらゆる恐怖の記憶が
木霊となって、しじまを侵す。
ああ、斜面を這い上がらねばならぬか
絞首台がぼんやりと姿を現す。
ひとたび教会の扉に触れれば
恐ろしい速さで矢が飛んで来る。
「お慈悲を！」お前は叫ぶ、奴らの箱にそんなものが入っているかのように。
だが箱は当の昔に空っぽだ。
何とか助けてやりたいが、俺だって同じ境遇
この状況では無理だ。
俺たちは皆ひざまずいたまま走らねばならぬ。
日時計の影は永遠を指している
全ての数字を横切って。
何て時は長いのか
何て陰は暗いのか
何て鷹は真直ぐ飛ぶのか
己の矢の方向に向かって。
何て夜は長いのか
この道はなぜこんなに狭い？
何て俺の体の具合は悪いのだ
矢に貫かれたこの体は。 |
4. The Sleepwalkers
At night, this mindless army, ranks unbroken by dissent,
is moved into action and their pace does not relent.
In step, with great precision, these dancers of the night
advance against the darkness - how implacable their might!
Eyes undulled by moon, their arms and legs akimbo,
they walk and live, hoping soon to surface from this limbo.
Their minds, anticipating the dawn of the day,
shall never know what's waiting mere insight away
- too far, too soon.
Senses dimmed in semi-sentience, only wheeling through this plane,
only seeing fragmented images, prematurely curtailed by the brain,
but breathing, living, knowing in some measure at least
the soul which roots the matter of both Beauty and the Beast.
From what tooth or claw does murder spring,
from what flesh and blood does passion?
Both cut through the air with the pendulum's swing
in deadly but delicate fashion.
And every range of feeling is there in the dream
and every logic's reeling in the force of the scream;
the senses sting.
And though I may be dreaming and reality stalls
I only know the meaning of sight and that's all
and that's nothing.
The columns of the night advance,
infectiously, their cryptic dance
gathers converts to the fold -
in time the whole raw world will pace these same steps
on into the same bitter end.
Somnolent muster - now the dancing dead
forsake the shelter of their secure beds,
awaken to a slumber whose depths they dread,
as if the ground they tread would give way
beneath the solemn weight of their conception.
I'd search the hidden corners of all this world,
make reason of the sensory whorl
if I only had time,
but soon the dream is ended.
Tonight, before you lay down to the sweetness of your sleep
do you question your surrender to the drop from Lover's Leap
or does the anaesthetic darkness take hold on its very own?
Does your body rise in service with not one dissenting groan?
These waking dreams of life and death
in the mirror are twisted and buckled;
lashes flicker, a catch of breath,
skin whitening at the knuckles.
The army of sleepwalkers shake their limbs and are loose
and though I am a talker, I can phrase no excuse
not to rise again.
In the chorus of the night-time I belong
and I, like you, must dance to that moonlight song
and in the end I, too, must pay the cost of this life.
If all is lost none is known
and how could we lose what we've never owned?
Oh, I'd search out every knowledge that I could find,
unravel all the mysteries of mind,
if I only had time,
if I only had time,
but soon my time is ended. |
4. 夢遊病者の軍団
夜が来ると、心を持たぬこの軍団は、階級の合意（ディセント）もないまま
行動に移り、その動きにはそつがない（リレント）
歩みは正確極まり、この夜（ナイト）の踊り手たちは
闇を押しのけて進む…何と無常な力（マイト）よ！
両目は月明かりに開き、腕と足はしびれた（アキムボー）まま
歩き、生き、間もなくこの宙ぶらりん世界（リムボー）から浮上しようと
気持ちはまだ見ぬ夜明け（ドーノブザデイ）にざわつかされ
そこに何が待つか知る術はなく、ただ見通しを立てる（インサイタウェイ）にも
道は遠く、余裕などない
感覚は半ば麻痺し、ただ平面（プレイン）の上を回転するだけ
見えるのは断片的な像、脳（ブレイン）が早まって省略する
それでも呼吸し、生き、少なくとも（アトリースト）限界はある
美女なり野獣（ビースト）なりその物に根ざす魂を知るには
どんな歯と爪から殺人が起こり
どんな血と肉から熱情が生じるか？
それらは揺れる振り子のように宙を切る
必殺の法で、だが優雅な様で
感じられるどの範囲もが夢の中
どの論理も悲鳴の力によろめいて
感覚は刺すように痛む
私は夢を見ているのかも知れぬ
現実性は滞り、目にするものの意味が分かるだけ
それは全てか、全くの空虚
夜の合唱は前進し
謎めいた踊りは伝染的に
結集し、集団へと改宗する
間もなくあるがままの全世界は
同じ歩みに合わさり
同じ苦しい最後を迎えるだろう
眠りの兵士、今や踊る死人は
安全な寝床の避難所を捨て
眠りの恐ろしい深みから起きて
構想の厳かな重みの下で
まるで踏みしめる地面に導かれるように
おお、この全世界の隠された隅々まで見抜ければ
感覚の混乱の理由が解ければ
もし時間さえあれば…
だが、もうすぐこの夢は終わる
起きろ、起きろ！
今夜、君が甘美な眠りに落ちる前に
それは心中の名所から飛び降りる降伏だと疑わないか？
それとも麻痺させるような闇が猛威を振るい
君の体は文句の呻き一つ上げずに起き上がってしまうのか？
この歩き回る生と死の夢は
鏡の中でねじくれ歪む
手足は痙攣し、息は途切れ
皮膚は関節まで青ざめる
夢遊病者の軍団は手足を震わせ出動する
私は語り手、だが再び起き上がらないという弁明は不能だ
夜の合唱の中、私は君と同様
月明かりの歌に踊らねばならぬ
そして最後には支払わねばならぬ
この人生の代償を
もし全てが失われるなら何も知りはできない
だが所有してもいないものをどうやって失うというのだ？
おお、見つけ出せる全ての知識をつきとめ
心の全ての謎を暴き出せたら
もし時間さえあれば…
もし時間さえあれば…
だが、もうすぐ私の時間は尽きる |
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