A Road Assumed
drawing
by Sarah Longlands
Index of titles and beginnings
‘A
fragmentary arriving, leaving’ A fragmentary arriving, leaving, /
in long mornings not yet light / and in mornings long from sight,
/ recall as unfixed as a presentiment.
‘A
Road Assumed’
A road
assumed, at one with nameless grainy dawn, / rain shining on
the roofs, and still too dark to read / whatever map is held—seems
long ago, inborn, /
but that’s untrue. Sight makes miles: and all days bleed
/ as though torn out before their time
Evening air The local wind that habit vales / rise up
as the evening cools; / presences of movement only, / lives of
touch and voice / without a form
‘He finds his own belief uneasy to observe’ He
finds his own belief / uneasy to observe; / he stares, as at
a grief. / How it must unnerve // in dismantling! Not so. / He
has never known / how assumptions grow / until they’re thrown.
He hears meanings He hears meanings where others hear
/ an intermittent ruffling wind; / the disturbed waters rhyme
for him, / and, for him, the momentary change // of shadows speaks.
‘How imperative an edge’ The beginnings of a
journey; the platform’s edge / an all-familiar token of
the traveller; the town / unknown now to his back; a high-walled
street’s / approach lets silence stand alone.
How strange, how familiar Seen as strange, now: tomorrow
/ a taken in a landscape. Parts / of oneself as this. Most, perhaps.
Increments, decrements Awareness treads in steps, no matter
how / the surface seems to glide: at once / the window’s
lighter than it was, / the sun is at the sill
In Eleusis
|
iii A day so new it has no light iv ‘Day’s beginning or my own?’ vix The last evolving hour of night |
||
‘In
what medium is the flight of thought?’ In what medium is the
flight of thought? / I can say no more than the evening thrush
/ who marks the cooling of the afternoon / with his high-wall
song. I can’t give purpose / where it bears no case; nor
can the fluid / sentence of his notes define my hearing / of
his thought.
Old blackbird Old blackbird, / meagre-feathered, / watchman
of first-light / whose endless winter’s / muteness is not
far— / you know this: / it is in your song.
Opaque, complex Opaque, complex / from the outside; /
simple / singleness, / the centre.
Summer’s mortally aware at the day’s end Summer’s
mortally aware at the day’s end. / Evening brings the scent
of elders lonely / by the stream in tiny-flowered fullness; shades
/ darker than the leafless darks of winter days / draw beneath
the banks of bloom. Yet the scent / is weightier than passing
time — the stillness on the air / a loaded presage filling
dusk: and part-elsewhere.
‘The less upon the mind, the day grows long’ The
less upon the mind, the day / grows long, knowing little / of
itself. A speculative width, / window-shaped upon a wall / held
out at arms’ length: tall / chimneys’ corbelled shades
/ lie sawn upon the terraced roofs, / and move.
‘The sun upon the curve of sea and the light day floats’
The hands that hold the unformed day now let it go. / He
stays ashore to watch the star-set, magnitude / n magnitude until
the low-horizoned wanderer remains. / The sun upon the curve
of sea and the light day floats.
‘The
wheel turns from sky to track’ In thinking that it travels straight / it revolves
about a heaviness unseen. / As evening comes, a cadence changes—
/ echoes once unheard / are clear.
The Traveller Bare room, night-arousal in an unseen flow
/ of air, he asks the night which is about to go: // Where is
it, this place which you move to be? / —Specific places
don’t mean much to me.
Through the lancet’s void Through the lancet’s
void / falls starlight, on the floor, / the silent room buoyed
/ up by night, idea of a door / unknown.
thirteen poems
are presented here, including the full text of In Eleusis:
click the underlined titles