Night Altitude
drawing by Sarah Longlands
Index of titles and beginnings
Night
Altitude Unlocal
space, / —uncentred, / bound by no more limit / than the
pleasure of the skin
Oceanic Night Open, oceanic night; daytime entities
know / no shore, no edge, no silent boundary.
Undebatable, the roads
of right Undebatable,
the roads of right / before the child’s eyes; / orders of
a world so slight / and so short-lived and yet / entire, encompassed
by an effortless belief.
‘Around, the days
go light of sense’
Inward
sight redeems the past / of living memory, makes grief / more
bearable. And yet belief / hangs winter-bare, in distance cast.
‘Day on day a different
angle of the sun’ Day
on day a different angle of the sun / bleaches soft the boards.
And the hard-edged / shadow in its scythe-like passing rests
upon / the indeterminate.
One
in a multitude
One day, lost, indistinguishable now / amongst the host and multitudes
of days
The Interior of the
Temple; winter afternoon
Forewarning of what—that not known / at first— now
past; he stares up to the void, / a half-built attitude of mind
destroyed / as though within one breath a world had flown.
The
plain of day Truthful
day. / Partial thought; / shadow of / untruthfulness / sun-spilt
/ across the plain / of day.
Below the radar Mid afternoon. Vision through the
casement / to the centre, where the blocks / make buildings of
the earlier time / seem starved and small.
Unending weight makes
dead the heart Unending weight makes dead the heart / where
living in the moveless pause / is done. The epicycle’s end:
/ perspective on a world apart / from origins, beneath the laws
/ that have no mind, do not defend
‘Wakening
at night in an unfamiliar place’ Wakening at night in an unfamiliar place, the
window on the road whose name / he can’t recall, the moonlight
on his face; / but what will come is not the same / as what has
gone.
Day without skylines Rain falls / on the tin shed roof
/ regular columns of drops / at the open door, / numberless inversions
of one changing world.
In the patterning of
sound He looks out
beyond / the frame. Rain / is hollow on the roof. // In the patterning
of sound / is the day’s encoded name.
Brief
day, short leaving Brief
day, short leaving, / weaving of a year's end / in leaflessness
and cold. / Frosts' fold, white, starred.
The undividing aether Two lives, separated in the undividing
aether, / the anciently new within the arms; the light / the
unspent daylight, here, in uncentred time
On the common Grey morning hour, rise of land, /
garment of the sensate day; / mortal memory, unhedging sight
‘Fades on the heath
the light’ Fades
on the heath the light / in frost; paths go to night. / Wears,
the sentience of day; / every plural way // grows singular: ends,
/ where day depends.
How many days began
as this? How many days
began as this? / As indigo behind the eye? Upon / the coolness
of the face the skyline / breadth of light and colour’s
origin?
Late autumn, early evening Lacking comment on the age, the angle
of the light acute / and straight upon the furrow, bringing upward
to the edge / of time the spent and hidden pasts.
The plaintful wind A human half-shape moans / upon an
age and hones / the blunted grievances, // elects a stranger’s
forms
Lens of language Lens of language, that open book,
days’ light / head on and charactered: the mind is spare
/ before the age
Metamorphosis of passion Passion rising from the deeps, / flowering
of time-dependent form / where the field of person sleeps.
Sometimes the mind awakens
where the habitus of meaning sleeps Sometimes the mind awakens / where the habitus
of meaning sleeps. / Everything is accessible, proportioned out
/ as though in the mind’s eye; particles of light / bear
equal weight
Journeyable roads Compliant to a word; / yielded to him
a place, / made for him an age
‘One space holds
many things’ One
space holds many things; / none mutually excludes
In the public bar of
the Mariner’s Arms, Bridgwater: storm outside Sheet-anchored in an age whose drift
/ began way back; (some abstraction / of it in the mind, caulking
up the rift / between the sight of elements in action—day
by day an ever-sliding sea infloods towards the foregone end—
/ and a dumb presentiment that we / are strangely moveless.
Imperium Sessile world / in an air-fanned ember,
/ thought stretched out on dust, / mechanism in the amber, /
intricate.
October day; the playing
field’s fence cannot be seen
October day; the playing field’s / fence cannot be seen,
but somewhere / there’s a game: the thin mist yields / the
cries. The muffling air // is stretched out thinly by the sounds.
Person ~ simile of world All words ~ allegory on a quietus.
/ The road rises, the tractive axle turns, / salience supports
a name. Motion ~ / metaphor’s unmovedness. Person ~ / simile
of world.
The Great Wall Reason is the superstitious face upon
the coin, / the exhaustive gravamen of earthly fates. / Names
give up. Unknown conjoin: / run out in sand. Defence predominates.
The
steady star in the well’s depth The steady star in the well’s depth / moves,
the field swings, an eye / is drawn aside, a traverse made, /
a depth of night drawn overhand
The flower All that is complexity / falls in
dearth; / affluence in need.
'Change,
gravity’s companion'
Change: / gravity’s companion, / unseen sister-sun, / centre
of the orbit of a life
The mountain-shades
of memory The breath
of air / that shakes the surface / takes lucidity; shakes / the
shallow surface / of the skein of days;
Gravities Unweighted sun / in seas of time;
/ souls run / in simple rhyme.
Seven poems are presented here: click the underlined titles