Sunday 19 January 2014

14. In the Landscape of Language



to shut down at last
– this sticky pleasure grown around –
“we never sinned in language”

oh no, what
is happening here
& where are
the poets when
you really need ‘em
then?

the light is soft
soft & clear
this evening
  blanched sun
  stirred thru milky cloud
  a faint burnished stain
  flavours the west

we have run out of pronouns
                            – now

Allora, perche questa poem attraversa qui?
– non lo so – non faccio agente di viaggio, ma poeta soltando

ah, but that beef was good
then we slept in the heat
while the berries in the hedgerow slowly ripened
                                  red as warning

“what I said to myself is that I would write a poem which was to its language what a person is to its landscape”
Lyn Hejinian, The Language of Inquiry (U California P, 2000), p 203

just
    assume it’s true
    & then sometimes
    it is

this bloody language
squishy as soggy pie
stains
       everything

these riots in the mist of where we are
free us from the constraints of who we are


1 comment:

  1. l 3: Michael Haslam, “Alune and the Idle Gardener”, introducing interview by Andrew Duncan, “The Hallowed Cloughs of Haslamabad; Time Sprites”, in edited Tim Allen & Andrew Duncan, Don’t Start me Talking: Interviews with Contemporary Poets (Salt, 2006), p 189.

    ReplyDelete