Windfall
What is love if it is not an unravelling
against the dark? In the moonless field
between house and river, remember
how you stood with your arms
wide to the night, under every tumid
star, waiting for one to drop.
I read about him that was given wings.
His father fixed those wings to carry him away.They carried him halfway home, and then he fell.
And he fell not because he flewbut because he loved it so.
You see it’s neither pride, nor gravity but lovethat pulls us back down to the world.
Love furnishes the wings, and that same lovewill watch over us as we drown.
The soul makes a thousand crossings, the heart, just one.John Glenday, “Landscape with Flying Man,” Grain: Poems (Pan Macmillan, 2009)
- John Glenday, "Undark"
And so they come back, those girls who painted
the watch dials luminous and died.
They come back and their hands glow and their lips
and hair and their footprints gleam in the past like alien snow.
It was as if what shone in them once had broken free
and burned through the cotton of their lives.
And I want to know this: how they came to believe
that something so beautiful could ever have turned out right,
but though they open their mouths to answer me,
all I can hear is light. This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworksof corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this waywith our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea.John Glenday, The River- What was his name again - that fisher lad
dragged under with his fankled nets -
him that the fishes hooked and filleted?
I often wonder if the irony of it all amused him
as he left off from kicking against the dark, and drowned:
not, (as his Mother always feared) to be lost at sea, but found.
Tell me you’ve never seen a hangman hung,
nor laughed at the dying tenor, topped by his own song;
nor stumbled across a baker’s corpse, rising like dough;
nor wept with the weeping ferryman while Charon
gummed his coin. Friends, we’re all done for by the things we do.
If I were a farmer, I’d shrink from the ripening grain.John Glenday, ‘Grain’ - Portage, by John Glenday
We carry the dead in our hands.
There is no other way.The dead are not carried in our memories. They died
in another age, long before this moment.
We shape them from the wounds
they left on the inanimate,
ourselves, as falling water
will turn stone into a bowl.There is no room in our hearts
for the dead, though we often imagine that there is,
or wish it to be so,
to preserve them in our warmth,
our sweet darkness, where their fists
might beat at the soft contours of our love.
And though we might like to think
that they would call out to us, they could never do so,
being there. They would never dare to speak,
lest their mouths, our names, fill
quietly with blood.We carry the dead in our hands
as we might carry water - with a careful,
reverential tread.
There is no other way.How easily, how easily their faces spill.
- The River | John Glenday
“The River”
John Glenday
This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworks
of corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.
Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this way
with our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea. - John Glenday, "Blind"
I was thinking of what you said
and it isn’t true. Who can say what will come
and what will come to nothing?
You seemed so far away.
The moon had long set, but something distant and cold
shone through the half-open window
and the form that lay beside me in the bed
seemed less than an absence smoothed into the dark.
That night, I held you not for warmth or pardon, but for light.
Remember that blind man
who once passed us in the street?
How he touched his stick gently
against the world — just confirming the world
still travelled with him — then strode on as if something
that was not darkness lay ahead? The River
by John Glenday
This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworks
of corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.
Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this way
with our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea.- national poetry month, day 27
Grain
What was his name again — that fisher lad
dragged under with his fankled nets —
him that the fishes hooked and filleted?
I often wonder if the irony of it all amused him
as he left off from kicking against the dark, and drowned
not, (as his Mother always feared) to be lost at sea, but found.
Tell me you’ve never seen a hangman hung,
nor laughed at the dying tenor, topped by his own song;
nor stumbled across a baker’s corpse, rising like dough;
nor wept with the weeping ferryman while Charon
gummed his coin. Friends, we’re all done for by the things we do.
If I were a farmer, I’d shrink from the ripening grain.
—John Glenday - John Glenday, "Landscape with Flying Man"
I read about him that was given wings.
His father fixed those wings to carry him away.
They carried him halfway home, and then he fell.
And he fell not because he flew
but because he loved it so. You see
it’s neither pride, nor gravity but love
that pulls us back down to the world.
Love furnishes the wings, and that same love
will watch over us as we drown.
The soul makes a thousand crossings, the heart, just one. - John Glenday, "Portage"
We carry the dead in our hands.
There is no other way.
The dead are not carried in our memories. They died
in another age, long before this moment.
We shape them from the wounds
they left on the inanimate,
ourselves, as falling water
will turn stone into a bowl.
There is no room in our hearts
for the dead, though we often imagine that there is,
or wish it to be so,
to preserve them in our warmth,
our sweet darkness, where their fists
might beat at the soft contours of our love.
And though we might like to think
that they would call out to us, they could never do so,
being there. They would never dare to speak,
lest their mouths, our names, fill
quietly with blood.
We carry the dead in our hands
as we might carry water - with a careful,
reverential tread.
There is no other way.
How easily, how easily their faces spill. - The Ugly
I love you as I love the Hatchetfish,
the Allmouth, the Angler,
the Sawbelly and Wolf-eel,
the Stoplight Loosejaw, the Fangtooth;all our sweet bathypelagic ones,
and especially with those too terrible or sly
even for Latin names; who staple
their menfolk to the vagina’s hidelike scorched purses, stiff with seed;
whom God built to trawl
endless cathedrals of darkness,
their bland eyes gaping like sores;who would choke down hunger itself,
had it pith and gristle enough;
who carry on their forehead
the trembling light of the world.-John Glenday
- The River (John Glenday)
This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworks
of corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.
Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this way
with our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea. - Undark by John Glenday
And so they come back, those girls who painted
the watch dials luminous and died.They come back and their hands glow and their lips
and hair and their footprints gleam in the past like alien snow.It was as if what shone in them once had broken free
and burned through the cotton of their lives.And I want to know this: how they came to believe
that something so beautiful could ever have turned out right,but though they open their mouths to answer me,
all I can hear is light. - The River
This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworksof corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this waywith our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea.
John Glenday Because I’m just that type of person, I spent an unnecessary amount of time agonizing over what to put as a title for my blog after putting Cor as my header image. I chose a line from this poem so I figured I’d share it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Portage”
John GlendayWe carry the dead in our hands.
There is no other way.The dead are not carried in our memories. They died
in another age, long before this moment.
We shape them from the wounds
they left on the inanimate,
ourselves, as falling water
will turn stone into a bowl.There is no room in our hearts
for the dead, though we often imagine that there is,
or wish it to be so,
to preserve them in our warmth,
our sweet darkness, where their fists
might beat at the soft contours of our love.
And though we might like to think
that they would call out to us, they could never do so,
being there. They would never dare to speak,
lest their mouths, our names, fill
quietly with blood.We carry the dead in our hands
as we might carry water - with a careful,
reverential tread.
There is no other way.How easily, how easily their faces spill.
- Blind
I was thinking of what you said
and it isn’t true. Who can say what will come
and what will come to nothing?
You seemed so far away.
The moon had long set, but something distant and cold
shone through the half-open window
and the form that lay beside me in the bed
seemed less than an absence smoothed into the dark.
That night, I held you not for warmth or pardon, but for light.
Remember that blind man
who once passed us in the street?
How he touched his stick gently
against the world – just confirming the world
still travelled with him – then strode on as if something
that was not darkness lay ahead?
John Glenday - Let us now give thanks
for these salt-blown
wind-burned pastures
where oatgrass and timothy
shrink from the harrow of the sea
where Scotland at long last
wearies of muttering its own name
where we may begin
to believe we have always known
what someone in his wisdom
must have meant
when he gave us everything
and told us nothing.John Glenday, “A Westray Prayer” (i.m. Mike and Barbara Heasman)
- Undark by John Glenday
And so they come back, those girls who painted
the watch dials luminous and died.
They come back and their hands glow and their lips
and hair and their footprints gleam in the past like alien snow.
It was as if what shone in them once had broken free
and burned through the cotton of their lives.
And I want to know this: how they came to believe
that something so beautiful could ever have turned out right,
but though they open their mouths to answer me,
all I can hear is light. All we can ever hear
is the slipping by of things
as another night comes down.Everything changes forever;
everything remains.
The elderflower moonthe rapefield’s cadmium
and the lark’s voice,
widening into silence like a river.Listen:
beyond the heart’s breath
and the lingering soul,beyond the last bee
dying in the honeysuckle,
beyond the cirrus and the fallstreaksof tomorrow’s rain -
the sound of things becoming
what they never will be again.John Glenday, ‘At Innernytie’- The Ugly - John Glenday
I love you as I love the Hatchetfish,
the Allmouth, the Angler,
the Sawbelly and Wolf-eel,
the Stoplight Loosejaw, the Fangtooth;
all our sweet bathypelagic ones,
and especially those too terrible or sly
even for Latin names; who staple
their menfolk to the vagina’s hide
like scorched purses, stiff with seed;
whom God built to trawl
endless cathedrals of darkness,
their bland eyes gaping like sores;
who would choke down hunger itself,
had it pith and gristle enough;
who carry on their foreheads
the trembling light of the world.
–John Glenday - "The River"
by John Glenday
This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworks
of corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.
Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this way
with our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea. - John Glenday, "Imagine You Are Driving"
Imagine you are driving
nowhere, with no one beside you;
with the empty road unravelling and ravelling
in sympathy as the wheel turns in your hands.
On either side the wheatfields go shimmering
past in an absence of birdsong, and the sky
decants the shadows of the weather from itself.
So you drive on, hopeful of a time
when the ocean will rise up before you like dusk
and you will make landfall at last —
some ancient, long-forgotten mooring,
which both of you, of course, will recognise;
though as I said before, there is no one beside you
and neither of you has anywhere to go. - "Portage," John Glenday
We carry the dead in our hands.
There is no other way.
The dead are not carried in our memories. They died
in another age, long before this moment.
We shape them from the wounds
they left on the inanimate,
ourselves, as falling water
will turn stone into a bowl.
There is no room in our hearts
for the dead, though we often imagine that there is,
or wish it to be so,
to preserve them in our warmth,
our sweet darkness, where their fists
might beat at the soft contours of our love.
And though we might like to think
that they would call out to us, they could never do so,
being there. They would never dare to speak,
lest their mouths, our names, fill
quietly with blood.
We carry the dead in our hands
as we might carry water - with a careful,
reverential tread.
There is no other way.
How easily, how easily their faces spill. - Portage
We carry the dead in our hands.
There is no other way.The dead are not carried in our memories. They died
in another age, long before this moment.
We shape them from the wounds
they left on the inanimate,
ourselves, as falling water
will turn stone into a bowl.There is no room in our hearts
for the dead, though we often imagine that there is,
or wish it to be so,
to preserve them in our warmth,
our sweet darkness, where their fists
might beat at the soft contours of our love.
And though we might like to think
that they would call out to us, they could never do so,
being there. They would never dare to speak,
lest their mouths, our names, fill
quietly with blood.We carry the dead in our hands
as we might carry water - with a careful,
reverential tread.
There is no other way.How easily, how easily their faces spill.
-John Glenday
- a 4-poem appreciation
I like these.
1. The Ruins of Timoleague Abbey, by Sean O Coileain
There is no stew
for this arriving prodigal,
no candled bed.My kin
lie under the ground
of this place.2. Tin, by John Glenday
the very first tin of cling peaches
in the world, and for half a century
my fingers reaching out to it.3. Ancestry, by Sean Hewitt
The damp had got its grip years ago
but gone unnoticed. The heads of the joists
feathered slowly in the cavity wall
and the room’s wet belly had begun to bow.4. The Swineherd, by Eilean Ni Chuilleanain
I want to lie awake at night
Listening to cream crawling to the top of the jug
And the water lying soft in the cistern.
—-
Sources:
http://anthonywilsonpoetry.com/2013/09/13/lifesaving-poems-eilean-ni-chuilleanains-swineherd/
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/246010
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/249014
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/nov/14/saturday-poem-tin-john-glenday - "The River"
by John Glenday
This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworks
of corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.
Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this way
with our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea. - The River by John Glenday
This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworksof corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this waywith our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea.(via awritersruminations)
- from Concerning the Atoms of the Soul
Someone explained once how the pieces of what we are
fall downwards at the same rate
as the Universe.
The atoms of us, falling towards the centre
of whatever everything is. And we don’t see it.
We only sense their slight drag in the lifting hand.
That’s what weight is, that communal process of falling.
John Glenday - “Imagine You Are Driving” - John Glenday
Imagine you are driving
nowhere, with no one beside you;
with the empty road unravelling and ravelling
in sympathy as the wheel turns in your hands.
On either side the wheatfields go shimmering
past in an absence of birdsong, and the sky
decants the shadows of the weather from itself.
So you drive on, hopeful of a time
when the ocean will rise up before you like dusk
and you will make landfall at last –
some ancient, long-forgotten mooring,
which both of you, of course, will recognise;
though as I said before, there is no one beside you
and neither of you has anywhere to go. - Etching of a Line of Trees on a Hill Above Auchterhouse
in memorium John Goodfellow Glenday
I carved out the careful absence of a hill and a hill grew.
I cut away the fabric of the trees
and the trees stood shivering in the darkness.
When I had burned off the last syllables of wind,
a fresh wind rose and lingered.
But because I could not bring myself
to remove you from that hill,
you are no longer there. How wonderful it is
that neither of us managed to survive
when it was love that surely pulled the burr
and love that gnawed its own shape from the burnished air
and love that bent that absent wind against a tree.
Some shadow’s hands moved with my hands
and everything I touched was turned to darkness
and everything I could not touch was light.John Glenday
- Blind
John Glenday
I was thinking of what you said
and it isn’t true. Who can say what will come
and what will come to nothing?
You seemed so far away.
The moon had long set, but something distant and cold
shone through the half-open window
and the form that lay beside me in the bed
seemed less than an absence smoothed into the dark.
That night, I held you not for warmth or pardon, but for light.
Remember that blind man
who once passed us in the street?
How he touched his stick gently
against the world — just confirming the world
still travelled with him — then strode on as if something
that was not darkness lay ahead? - "Portage" - John Glenday
We carry the dead in our hands.
There is no other way.
The dead are not carried in our memories. They died
in another age, long before this moment.
We shape them from the wounds
they left on the inanimate,
ourselves, as falling water
will turn stone into a bowl.
There is no room in our hearts
for the dead, though we often imagine that there is,
or wish it to be so,
to preserve them in our warmth,
our sweet darkness, where their fists
might beat at the soft contours of our love.
And though we might like to think
that they would call out to us, they could never do so,
being there. They would never dare to speak,
lest their mouths, our names, fill
quietly with blood.
We carry the dead in our hands
as we might carry water - with a careful,
reverential tread.
There is no other way.
How easily, how easily their faces spill. - "The River," John Glenday
This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworks
of corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.
Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this way
with our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea. - Grain
What was his name again – that fisher lad
dragged under with his fankled nets –
him that the fishes hooked and filleted?
I often wonder if the irony of it all amused him
as he left off from kicking against the dark, and drowned
not, (as his Mother always feared) to be lost at sea, but found.
Tell me you’ve never seen a hangman hung,
nor laughed at the dying tenor, topped by his own song;
nor stumbled across a baker’s corpse, rising like dough;
nor wept with the weeping ferryman while Charon
gummed his coin. Friends, we’re all done for by the things we do.
If I were a farmer, I’d shrink from the ripening grain.John Glenday
- The River
This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworks
of corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.
Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this way
with our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea.John Glenday
- John Glenday, "The River"
This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworks
of corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.
Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this way
with our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea. - Undark
And so they come back, those girls who painted
the watch dials luminous and died.
They come back and their hands glow and their lips
and hair and their footprints gleam in the past like alien snow.
It was as if what shone in them once had broken free
and burned through the cotton of their lives.
And I want to know this: how they came to believe
that something so beautiful could ever have turned out right,
but though they open their mouths to answer me,
all I can hear is light. - "Valentine" by John Glenday
suck my read heart white, I will, because I love you, bless me, o, and here, I will say, see I am back, in spite of you to bring a gift I grew, it was busy in me once, filled the red branches with blood, knocking like hope, beat time to my life’s decline, then followed after me in its way, and did its duty.
(the can opener was invented
forty-eight years after the tin can)
When you asked me for a love poem,
(another love poem) my thoughts
were immediately drawn to the early days
of the food canning industry –
all those strangely familiar trade-names from childhood:
Del Monte, Green Giant, Fray Bentos, Heinz.
I thought of Franklin and his poisoned men
drifting quietly northwest by north
towards the scooped shale of their graves
and I thought of the first tin of cling peaches
glowing on a dusty pantry shelf
like yet-to-be-discovered radium –
the very first tin of cling peaches
in the world, and for half a century
my fingers reaching out to it.
- Imagine You are Driving
Imagine you are driving
nowhere, with no one beside you;
with the empty road unravelling and ravelling
in sympathy as the wheel turns in your hands.
On either side the wheatfields go shimmering
past in an absence of birdsong, and the sky
decants the shadows of the weather from itself.
So you drive on, hopeful of a time
when the ocean will rise up before you like dusk
and you will make landfall at last –
some ancient, long-forgotten mooring,
which both of you, of course, will recognise;
though as I said before, there is no one beside you
and neither of you has anywhere to go.John Glenday
- The River by John Glenday
This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we’d have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworksof corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this waywith our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea.(via smellslikesunshine)
Landscape with Flying Man, by John Glenday
I read about him that was given wings.
His father fixed those wings to carry him away.
They carried him halfway home, and then he fell.
And he fell not because he flew
but because he loved it so. You see
it’s neither pride, nor gravity but love
that pulls us back down to the world.
Love furnishes the wings, and that same love
will watch over us as we drown.
The soul makes a thousand crossings, the heart, just one.- Poetry haul!
Caroline Bergvall’s Drift. BUY IT
Let the tides shake your life
let your life shake the ground
until your bones are bonedust
until your smile is smiledust
until your courage is delivered
ok ok until it is done
Other books of poetry from this Christmas-
Undark by John Glenday. The War Pictures section is really very fine. I am always snagged or hooked by a Glenday poem. I have Grain already and Undark has Portage, one of those “life saving poems” for me. It is less cohesive than Grain but still the real refinement, with no fuss, he makes it look easy.
Corridor by Saskia Hamilton. It yields to further examination, I’d say. Scrimshaw poems- little carvings- said one review, and I agree. Don’t attempt it all at once. There are a lot of dimensions to these poems. Like a gem, har de har, because that’s not a poetry review stereotype either.
The Hunt in the Forest, by John Burnside. An origin story: since my brother died I have been you might say a little crazed in harpooning Grief in poetry form. It is my Moby Dick for Lord’s sake. Never going to catch it. But the titular poem comes reasonably close. And the others. DO read this one in a single slightly drunken sitting. If I say fairy-tale and full of blood, I trust you know what I mean.
Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, by Patricia Lockwood. Oh my god how fucking delightful is this collection. Her poems are teeming and strange and so crammed full of things you will think, wow, other poets really don’t have much to say at all, do they. I bet her brain is full of sparkly synapses. If you agree that Emily Dickinson was the Father of American Poetry with a magnificent black and white beard you’ll certainly like this.
- Artillary Horses Under Fire
That slap the minie balls make when they strike
sickens the heart. Sounds just like pebbles
smacking into mud.
Mostly they fall straight off, then struggle
up again, shivering and stiff, but strangely
quiet till the next round comes.
Some simply twitch their flanks or slash
their tails across the wound , staring ahead.
You’d think it was a blowfly at them,
nothing more. I remember at Cold Harbor we watched
as the last from a team of six stood firm
in harness with five bullets in her side.
She toppled only when the sixth ball sheared
through bone. Not one was spooked, nor ran;
but then, the living were left limbered
to the dead. We could hear the rebels cheer
as horse after horse dropped through its traces,
kicking the caisson sides.
They hardly make no sound—that’s what I hate.
Die as they must, God damn them.
I don’t know. Some beasts act more like men.
-John Glenday, from “Whitman’s War" in Undark
- "The Garden" - John Glenday
for Erika
Just for a quarter of a day, I’d have you
follow me through the smoking willow herb
and my father’s garden’s half-seized gate, down
to that place where the knowledge of almost every-
thing comes undone in the powdery ceanothus shade;
where the apple goes withering back to blossom
in your palm, and the serpent, on its hind legs
in the shadows, leaves off whispering. - Concerning the Atoms of the Soul - John Glenday
Someone explained once how the pieces of what we are
Fall downwards at the same rate
As the Universe.
The atoms of us, falling towards the centreOf whatever everything is. And we don’t see it.
We only sense their slight drag in the lifting hand.
That’s what weight is, that communal process of falling.
Furthermore, these atoms carry hooks, like burrs,Hooks catching like hooks like clinging to like
That’s what keeps us from becoming something else,
And why in early love, we sometimes
Feel the tug of the heart snagging on another’s heart.Only the atoms of the soul are perfect spheres
With no means of holding on to the world
Or perhaps no need for holding on,
And so they fall through our lives catchingAgainst nothing, like perfect rain,
And in the end, he wrote, mix in that common well of light
At the centre of whatever the suspected
Centre is, or might have been. Grain
What was his name again — that fisher lad
dragged under with his fankled nets —
him that the fishes hooked and filleted?
I often wonder if the irony of it all amused him
as he left off from kicking against the dark, and drowned
not, (as his Mother always feared) to be lost at sea, but found.Tell me you’ve never seen a hangman hung,
nor laughed at the dying tenor, topped by his own song;
nor stumbled across a baker’s corpse, rising like dough;
nor wept with the weeping ferryman while Charon
gummed his coin. Friends, we’re all done for by the things we do.
If I were a farmer, I’d shrink from the ripening grain.John Glenday
- Portage
We carry the dead in our hands.
There is no other way.The dead are not carried in our memories. They died
in another age, long before this moment.
We shape them from the wounds
they left on the inanimate,
ourselves, as falling water
will turn stone into a bowl.There is no room in our hearts
for the dead, though we often imagine that there is,
or wish it to be so,
to preserve them in our warmth,
our sweet darkness, where their fists
might beat at the soft contours of our love.
And though we might like to think
that they would call out to us, they could never do so,
being there. They would never dare to speak,
lest their mouths, our names, fill
quietly with blood.We carry the dead in our hands
as we might carry water - with a careful,
reverential tread.
There is no other way.How easily, how easily their faces spill.
John Glenday
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