Never So Quiet

As I played the opening bars of my new composition
An old man stood in the darkness and began to dance
A curious dance in which he would spread out one hand
And then the other
And then there was a curious bowing routine
In which he would tilt forwards and backwards
And raise his hat to the young woman in the row behind him
It was mesmerising as a candle in a darkened room
It was profound as broken silence
It was tragic as a fugitive's fatal error
It was a dance none of whose steps or movements he would be able to recall
Though he stared at his polished shoes
And gazed at his beautiful old man's hands
And when he realised at last
That he had not performed the dance
It had been the other way around
He smiled and bowed until his forehead touched the soil of a distant shore

A passage for possible inclusion in a future work to be entitled 'The Crack that Ran All the Way to the Sea'.

I looked into the sky and saw that, in its vastness and the severity of its moods, it could mirror a human soul. I stood there looking, but the one I saw did not mirror any I might recognise. I watched it change, wondering if it grew closer or further away from achieving that perfect self-reflection, knowing that if it ever did, I would be able to look up at this heavenly extension and understand myself and the world in all our simplicity and profoundness. But today was not that day. Maybe no day of my life had ever been or would ever be that day. Maybe when the day came, the configuration would softly emerge, the inevitability of the moment somehow obvious in the instant, as brief and as recognisable as noon, but I would be diverted by some foolish errand and not look up, and the form would drift apart never to be seen. Nevertheless, I trusted it one day to tell; maybe long after my demise, the truth of my soul would be resplendent in the sky.