Things Behind the Sun.

Imagine if Joseph Conrad had written Huckleberry Finn, … or maybe he did, in some parallel world behind the sun. Picture this, Huck’s raft drifts through a scene from Night of the Hunter, floating past the fleeing orphans as they take refuge in a barn loft while down below Frankenstein’s monster reads Paradise Lost. On his way to the heart of darkness, Huck hitches a ride with Ulysses. He’s beside himself, white knuckled at the wheel, desperately trying to get home to his wife, but irresistibly drawn to the sexy lights of the city. Dr Frankenstein’s drunk in the back seat, every barman from here to the ends of the earth knows his sorry tale. How he fell from grace and how his punishment is to keep on falling forever. He falls asleep as Edgar Allen Poe describes how long it takes for light from distant galaxies to reach us. His theories are of no comfort to the roo on the roadside but up above, the owl looks like he understands everything. Poe points to a star and explains that when it died, the mountains were at the bottom of the ocean. And somewhere, behind the sun, the light we see now is shining on another world’s mountains, millions of years from now.

© Tony Lloyd 2006