'And the end of all our exploring...'

(...so could she be what it means?)

When 'Gaia's Complaint' became all of a piece in 1995, a long poem in six "Watches" like those observed aboard boats on the seas of the "mother ship", I dedicated it to a special somebody who had woken me up at the time.
Once the work felt finished and "right", and had been out for a few adventures of its own, I never touched it again.
The challenge of 'Gaia' was a big one, especially when I realised that some of the DNA code for this second baby girl of mine had already been deciphered years or even decades earlier, including during the latter years of my upbringing in England.
Today, it seems immensely pretentious to have envisaged the whole, while these long dormant fragments took their due but small places in 'Gaia', as a near turn of the century response to T.S. Eliot's magnificent 'The Waste Land' (Bartleby's online version).

Indeed, something in me even wanted to revisit parts of the 'Four Quartets'. Of
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

I made

The wounded surgeon did her best,
She used stale, worn-out syringes.
The world looked on, all of the rest
- kissed her goodbye, off its hinges.

A whole century scarce begun
with the Great War to end all wars
drew to its close with CNN
in hotels and homes & thus saw

snarling beasts devour Bethlehem,
the Jews and Palestinians,
the reign of industrial mayhem.
Jerusalem remained a dream

& Africa was sinister, [...]

Yes I know.
Reading back on it now, many passages are either good for the trash or would require a serious overhaul to meet even my own standards.

But for most of those who have read 'Gaia', the main question was, "What on earth is it really about?"
Well, the state and rape of the planet, for starters. This much was evident to everyone who considered the Earth to be feminine and the Sun masculine, a notion which totally threw a friend whose mother tongue was German! But there was far more to 'Gaia', including some largely autobiographical sections, addressing women more generally and one or two in particular.
So I thought.
Yet the poem's main enigma to its own writer came from the woman with whom I was then deep in love, largely unrequited. Now a friend and a person of the most remarkable insight, at the time she told me: "'Gaia' is not really about me or for me at all, you know, Nick!
"But nor does it all come out of your imagination. You see, 'Gaia' is about somebody you feel you once knew and whom you have yet to meet again."
Now that stumped me.

I'm not sure that I believed it.
Until this year, embarked on the 49th of my life.
That same Eliot said two very wise things in the Quartets:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.

and, even more famously:

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Known forever, I have met her again. Whether she too realises this and may, one day, reciprocate the recognition is very much her affair and quite evidently not a thing to be understood, if ever, by any heart but her own.
But here, entirely for her, are more 'Gaia' passages than I have ever dared publish on the Net before.
They were a gift to me.
The entire poem is a gift for her.
However, for what they're worth, these fragments I am willing to share:

The Old Man

bequeathed laughter,
proclaimed himself fallen from the 56th floor
to the 17th.
There is mercy above the clouds,
but not beneath.
Where does it come from, a cancer ?
The crab holds & eats away.
Sometimes the answer
resides in the question,
sometimes not;
the interrogation persists
always.
He gives substance to so many days
& unless I help to save
it, his wisdom will waste in the grave.
The coming after
resides where the laughter begins
on her face. On Gaia's face.
The solitude of wolves
proves to me that out of space,
half lost, you came.
Formed by night on the swell of a thunderous tide
you flew to me on the wind off the hills.
We warmed & shared a cup or two
& the shivering ceased with a lingering smile
& the hope in the storm's embrace.
Starfire seeping from your hollow bones,
I nearly had you then,
gnawing on your succulent admission
but you dissolved and made me a mist
chill as the threat of no return.
& with the dawn, the loss was there again.

Joys of Flying

Was I a Spitfire pilot once ?
Or was it just a borrowed dream,
that mad dance
of skating death, so swift,
the cockpit wrench in vain, blazing fuel ?
Whence do I relive events, so cruel,
that did not occur to me -
the insanity, the rats in the trenches,
the evil stench of riddled flesh
slung over wires, a crazed horse,
the foul taste of mud ... the noise ?
Shellfire ... Of course,
it is easier now that women
have shaken me through,
raked me out - and speak true.

Free ?
Such verse does not exist.
Free ? Such rhymes are not allowed.
By whom ?
By anyone.
The answer lies low in the hearts

of women. The place they hide
& will not disclose their secrets.
Free verse comes from the worlds of gods.
Unfreed, men's flight denies the glories

of vaginas, says their message
did not pass, her breasts were not there
& her hair of such incensed gold
is a lie ! You shouldn't be told

as you are to a soul. And yet
you change your blouse every day
as well as your knickers. Forget
wells. They will kill us anyway,

in their fleet passage, the pack
of jackals. They leap on our backs
with dry yelps & they call it 'life'
as if Gaia was made of strife

without care. One day I touched a
bowed shoulder. "What are you doing
here ?" she bounced & a vast boulder
fell loose.
"I have started climbing

the mountain again." & she, lost
somewhere, mapping out such strange stars,
placed kisses on the alchemist's
two cheeks. For us, there are no wars,

not against hearts that rage elsewhere,
such determined incarnations
forged in fragile love. (Then Gaia
almost scorns.) "Reincarnation ?"

the old man burst out & wanted
to go on, but was cut off there,
because I've heard it all before.
"Is a metaphor for granted

things," I suggested. Thus the shape
of her elbow is of lasting
interest, but there I escaped
him.
(Gaia says: " You're listening ? ")

I fly back to my turning place,
an outraged, turbulent, cross world,
and grant mouth to her troubled face,
her own bruised.
(Gaia says, " Sweet lord ! ")

Gaia can say what she wants to,
just as long as she gets the chance,
but will not yell what she wants to;
not if we don't storm in advance

& troop abroad in common sense.
Does 'common sense' call loud ? Experts
say, "Yes, we'll stop all this nonsense."
Have faith, Gaia ! We don't believe

them any more than you do. Yet
give animals in your forests
one wild card. We shall relieve
you - if we can - of the great threats

that made of you a funeral
pyre. "Your species is far too selfish,"
Gaia groans. "My disappearing
ozone layer leaves you like fish

on the beach, thrashing all your tails
& your fins until I am done
with you."
"Who comes next, the whales ?"
"No, nor dolphins; the snails have won."

Hanging On

O Gaia, this raging need to stay !
With or without her !
"Don't forget the boat," she said.
"I haven't, my friend."
I missed her once & won't again.
"She's not here yet," added Gaia.
No; & the surgeon, outrageously courageous,
said "Patience !"
"Your patients," I considered, "are more
numerous than any clients
I could find, there are few dreamers left !"
"They do exist !"
"Doctor, where ?
Science lies
beyond the borders of fantasy.
We live in a world - shall
I say... ?"

"You're saying it," Gaia replied.
"Why are they so lost ?"
We are not shipwrecked.
Some of us love you with ancient
hearts, upset to see you breaking
apart and will uphold our desire

to win, for you. Otherwise, why
remain ? Ambition is nothing, careers
are for others, but some concerns
are in common. Once I asked a woman :

"Why are you so beautiful ?"
"I don't know," she said,
"It's just my soul shining through."
As her friend splashed coffee
from nose to loose blouse,
we knew it had to happen again
& so did my wild one of the day
in the brightness of that sun
mounting towards noon.
Even at late breakfast time,
that raw-minded hay-headed lover
deceptively calm,
in perfection deserved her

Champagne.

[...]

Renaissance ?

" - Not sure - I saw it achieved once.
The midwife conceived a : "Get lost,
read a newspaper, have some lunch,
you don't want to watch this !"

"I must," I persisted. "I really would
like to, please !" How men adore
women then, borne out mysteries.
"Look, it's going to take another

hour. Go and read a newspaper !"
"This is the news." But I obeyed,
impatient, ate, was cross with her;
got back just in time. When the child

suddenly emerged, bloodied head
blinded amid the caressing,
such loving, such cries, I first said,
'Gaia, grant us all your blessing.'

I took the infant in my arms,
a woman looked : "Did we do that ?
Give her to me !" I did, disarmed;
there's no telling such a moment -

but then the midwife pushed me out,
once and for all. My daughter too
has the misfortune, now, to shout,
Gaia, but that is your fault. You

have rendered some ruthless - le rire
d'abord !
- And your daughter's mother ?
- Looks better by the year ! She did
lose misunderstanding, kept the kid.

- And you ?
- I chewed up my angel
whole, made of him a heart for you.
- In poems, the confessional
is disallowed.
- How very true;

convince me, Gaia ! It's over
for the both of us, if error
steps in now.
- I don't grasp you men !
- You never did, today or then,
times past.

- What really happened to
your angel ? If you're true, be true.

- He flew off, Gaia, kissed the sun,
ruined his wings, left us alone.

- That's risky stuff !
- Wasn't it just ?
I also thought so at the time.

- But Now ?

[...]