David Lean (1908-1991)

His eye was a viewfinder, composing every scene,
Demanding impossible perfection,
Determined that others should see things his way.
He could hide that shy uncertainty,
And play the impeccable gentleman,
Grooming his vanity with anxious superiority,
Making the world adore and serve him.

His secrets were between him and the dark.
As a boy, the first time he sat in a cinema,
Irresistible brothel of false idols and desires,
The curtains parted, and a beam of amber light
Stabbed through the smoke, a miracle,
So he entered another dimension,
And sat in awe, trading pain and loneliness,
For mystical revelation and forbidden magic.

The useless boy, backward in school,
Scorned as a dullard by his parents,
He sat glum and silent, staring into space,
Seeing things he could not tell to anyone,
Training his eye on the weird distance.
Breaking out of the sky’s chrysalis,
He wandered the fields after butterflies,
His eyes in flight, chancing the currents.
Disintegration took a long slow time,
One could die while still somehow breathing,
Abandoned, waking in an empty house,
Branded on the flesh, damned for all eternity,
Accursed in the eyes of God and man.
Where had father gone and why?
It must have been something he had done.

Nothing ever came between him and the lens;
Ruthless beauty would not allow any nuisance,
And people could only be angels or devils.
Tall and commanding, Quaker mouth set grim,
He raged at the world’s rude interruptions,
Conjuring wondrous stories in the air.
All his life he despised himself as second-rate,
Still beholden to the censor of pleasure,
Accusing himself of some lucky fluke.
Each love affair was played out,
Then canned and shelved when the credits rolled,
He would walk out and close the door forever,
Excise emotion like a malign tumour.
Loneliness remained his faithful companion,
When guilty bodies could no longer communicate,
Perfection thwarted, beauty fallen short.

More sensual than a woman’s skin
Was the feel and smell of film,
The ionised atmosphere of the cutting room,
All passion concentrated in each moment,
As solemn as a priest celebrating the Mass.
Life was in the cutting, not the leaving in;
The missing link, the space between two hearts.
Cold and correct, set apart in pained deliberation,
He yielded nothing to humour or praise,
Militant Lucifer directing his host of angels,
Commanding the tiniest detail with grim resolve,
Decreeing right and wrong.
Every story was a grand anabasis,
Mounted with the most meticulous preparation,
The child’s desire to astound,
To go further and further, beyond any rival.
Self and the world were riding on horseback,
Setting out for the crusade, to attain the hero’s crown;
But enemies were everywhere in ambush,
Their poisoned arrows flying through the air.
Clenched on the brink, in peril of madness or murder,
Punishing his senses for their godless craving,
Afraid to show his heart for fear of what might be,
He would lead all to perdition for his cause,
To carry through his mission to the end,
Exacting the infinite splendour of the minute,
The thoughts of a lone mind in a vast landscape.
Alone against the hostile crowd’s menace,
He framed the great geometry of emotions,
Inexplicable immensity in a single look.