I

There’s the sound but you’ll never be able to locate it. It comes from another direction but you always look into the roadside glade, finding no one there, fallen leaves only, moulted barks. Or once or twice there is only this old couple bleating on the saxophones, the sound you’ve mistaken for some animal quacking, ominously, and the music-stand away from them, the scores scrolled by the wind, apart from the music. The school is screened by pinetrees from sight and sometimes the loudspeakered dean’s voice escapes, sometimes the smell of lunches, which you’re vaguely familiar with. You could always tell. Overcooked rice sticky on the teeth with the bright side of instant sweetness, frosted chicken thighs, pickles and yolk soup. But the children are hidden. Maybe it is just your sight going, going towards somewhere not there, not growing but faded.

II

You’d played this whole day or you’d played truant and you’d still get home. The whole park’s almost established by yourself, twig diadems, sand castles, paper boats, none of them permanent. Or it was merely a hideout from rain, for some surreptitious snacks banned at home. From chidings or for irrelevant warfare it may be. But those weren’t counted because you knew what defined a paper plane was the paper part, not plane part, and a balloon fell limp to the ground if it was drained of its bloated rancour.

III

Look

people could not stand these time, these gloaming intervals, and that’s why they’re here, gathered in the square, dancing, talking, doing things that are contrary to their moods, the one shared mood of the dusk. Why do we temporarily love them, love to see them, they surmised, dragging their kids off from the pesticided evergreen, because they are changing, mark some change that time itself isn’t, couldn’t supply, and after a whole day alone we’re desperate to see some changes, how it is changing. Not for them, no such sentiment and this unwillingness to wait in uneventfulness, not yet at least.

Any increase in knowledge is disgusting we know, at last, where we are. Too bad that you want to be bad for a time, incorrigible and incomprehensible after a time, the rushing through it, the just wanting to finish it.

Nonetheless you were told something isn’t going to change and isn’t changed. It isn’t, that hasn’t. That’s why there is a point in excerpts, abridged versions of the whole story, though even simplified tunes you’re only condescending to play, five minutes at a time. The technique’s never refined and you’re far from reformed.

But it is less vulgar when it comes true.

IV

Why are they shouting, at each other or soliloquising so loud. Maybe it is the wind it is muffling their voices it’s felt. They’re passing too fast and the engine’s loud. The kid’s at the back, a sequence we were persuaded from that time on the roller coaster. Not that if you fear this you should see this clearer, but for safety’s sake you’ll have to ride in front, just in case the leaning weight of the grownup who’s intended to shelter you from what’s coming ahead—always it is the dip that is scary, never climb—crushes you down.

The branches are ahead of us and get into our sight. But if it hits you you may hit back. It is soft and it doesn’t fight back.

They turned to you for company and so taught you to reach out for help. But they didn’t tell you the ultimate decision would be by yourself.

V

Then is the time when you’re bold enough to say something of your own, thinking that you’ve learnt enough, been silent enough. When it doesn’t loom out you’re frustrated, when it comes too easy you’re disconcerted. You’re not sure if you’ve heard it in that way or any other way. You’re not even sure if you’re hearing it or fantasising. Or it has just lasted for a while it seems. But the volume’s all the way been getting louder and louder and your hearing is irrevocably damaged.

The voice is coming from the wrong side of the horn, or tunnel whatever, speaking to you and you might not even discern the words. And you cannot speak, never answering the childish questionings, yourself, at the other end of this road, fallen, falling, out of the once glittering field.