- Joined
- Feb 23, 2012
- Messages
- 31
The older I get the more this resonates - I'm sure many of you know it already. Anybody got any more?
To Mercury, With a Crash Helmet
By P. M. Hubbard
God of all ways of going, I am old,
Or aging, and my motor-bike is sold.
Here is my helmet. Let it not be said
I so assumed survival as to make
No proper offering now that I forsake
The balanced wheel and wind, and have instead
A wheel-base and a roof over my head:
But take my helmet, Mercury, and take
All that it meant, danger and fear and fall,
Splendour and speed and peace, Mercury take them all.
Mercury take my solitude, which bound
My still mind in a cell of moving sound,
Walled with the wind of my own going, freed
From the hand-touch and the affinities of mind
Of the warm world caught up and cast behind:
Now no more can I keep for all my need,
The inviolable secrecy of speed
Behind my walls of wind, but am resigned
To await what comes and let the world intrude,
As the world will. Mercury take my solitude.
Mercury take the blinding rain, which hid
From puckered eyes the mischief that it did,
Sapping assayed safeties, wearing thin
Remarked margins, very quick to spread
A wet treachery under the tyres' tread,
Wielding my own speed and driving in
Cold between helmet and hair, scarf and skin,
Wearing down body and heart and head:
This I shall screened see, but not again
Feel it in all my bones. Mercury take the rain.
Mercury take the breathless curves, when I
Sat stable pivot to a heeling sky,
The sweet, inevitable line I rode,
Leaning upon my speed, hung in the huge
Sustaining circle of the centrifuge,
With all my senses centered on the node
Where the tyres' screaming crenels bit the road.
Now I am old, Mercury be my judge,
I lift this loved load from my hand and nerves
Before they fail my need. Mercury take the curves.
Mercury take the timeless cold, which beat
Feeling and strength from finger-tips and feet,
Little by little, as a fire starts,
Stealthily driving back the dividing line
Between sense and senseless, metal and mind, to combine
Hand and handle-bar, foot-rest and foot, as parts
Of a galloping steel-cold beast with twin hearts,
The fire in the belly of the bike and the fire in mine,
Seats of beset heat, which yet controlled
Bone intergrown with steel. Mercury take the cold.
Mercury take my helmet. It has been
Symbol and safeguard, and has stood between
My mind and fear, my head and the hard blows
Of many roads and weathers. It has stood
On scruffy cafe tables while my blood
Recalled to pain my fingertips and toes.
It has gone with me wherever a man goes
By land. But now I hand it up for good.
So to your keeping, Mercury, I commit
This helmet, since I have no further use for it.
To Mercury, With a Crash Helmet
By P. M. Hubbard
God of all ways of going, I am old,
Or aging, and my motor-bike is sold.
Here is my helmet. Let it not be said
I so assumed survival as to make
No proper offering now that I forsake
The balanced wheel and wind, and have instead
A wheel-base and a roof over my head:
But take my helmet, Mercury, and take
All that it meant, danger and fear and fall,
Splendour and speed and peace, Mercury take them all.
Mercury take my solitude, which bound
My still mind in a cell of moving sound,
Walled with the wind of my own going, freed
From the hand-touch and the affinities of mind
Of the warm world caught up and cast behind:
Now no more can I keep for all my need,
The inviolable secrecy of speed
Behind my walls of wind, but am resigned
To await what comes and let the world intrude,
As the world will. Mercury take my solitude.
Mercury take the blinding rain, which hid
From puckered eyes the mischief that it did,
Sapping assayed safeties, wearing thin
Remarked margins, very quick to spread
A wet treachery under the tyres' tread,
Wielding my own speed and driving in
Cold between helmet and hair, scarf and skin,
Wearing down body and heart and head:
This I shall screened see, but not again
Feel it in all my bones. Mercury take the rain.
Mercury take the breathless curves, when I
Sat stable pivot to a heeling sky,
The sweet, inevitable line I rode,
Leaning upon my speed, hung in the huge
Sustaining circle of the centrifuge,
With all my senses centered on the node
Where the tyres' screaming crenels bit the road.
Now I am old, Mercury be my judge,
I lift this loved load from my hand and nerves
Before they fail my need. Mercury take the curves.
Mercury take the timeless cold, which beat
Feeling and strength from finger-tips and feet,
Little by little, as a fire starts,
Stealthily driving back the dividing line
Between sense and senseless, metal and mind, to combine
Hand and handle-bar, foot-rest and foot, as parts
Of a galloping steel-cold beast with twin hearts,
The fire in the belly of the bike and the fire in mine,
Seats of beset heat, which yet controlled
Bone intergrown with steel. Mercury take the cold.
Mercury take my helmet. It has been
Symbol and safeguard, and has stood between
My mind and fear, my head and the hard blows
Of many roads and weathers. It has stood
On scruffy cafe tables while my blood
Recalled to pain my fingertips and toes.
It has gone with me wherever a man goes
By land. But now I hand it up for good.
So to your keeping, Mercury, I commit
This helmet, since I have no further use for it.