Changes, Days, Lives
photo:
Sarah Longlands
Index of titles and first lines
A life divided 
Some
expression of a cause / in the wearing out of day, / the road
laid out which few / would take: through double-doors
A world? Or some inversion of a world? A
world? Or some inversion / of a world? Greatest depths / flow
out in free dispersion
Brief, so brief Brief, so brief,
/ swift as last-light / on a northward wall
Can’t talk much— Can’t
talk much— // Nowhere, ‘here I’m safe’,
/ for habiliaments of self are in themselves unsettling-
Changes,
days, lives A
long road in a place I do not know; / the day is wearing, origins
grow dark— / the mind keeps close those slender thoughts
which grow
Day journey, night journey Day
journey, night journey, / element of travel in the shaping /
of the personal upon the mind
Embodied
only at the gate Part follows the
sun and the moon; / Part is slow, and cold in the earth
Ethos of the age Light coming on
the plain / and the dimming of the stars, / balancing. Roads
come clear
Far-travelled thought grows cold Signature
of remoteness- / far-travelled thought grows cold / writing the
one event / amid this aftermath
Given world Given world / millstone
sky / olive noon / August day.
In the plain of light Unconscious
irony / imparts the sense; / the unbodied hand / writes on the
wall // in the plain of light / at every juror's sight
It guides as an insight In
the long loosening of form / a pathway goes beyond the guessing.
Knot
in the road
Knot in the road; / a night-knot
Mood as a plain Mood as a plain,
mute / rising quickly to the hills
‘Name, loose held’ Name,
loose held. / Lone and unbound day
Night dialogue Awakening at night
— a line / of words hangs in the mind / as though
a dialogue, begun / in sleep, and sleep-defined // had paused
No
sense of speed Between unknowns,
/ the single day; / no sense / of speed
Persona Linear hour / lays out the road.
/ Blank familiar / falls away in sight
‘Qualities
held by hands of words’ Qualities / held
by the hands of words— / negatives / raising up where
speech falls short
Sentience Over stone and
into pool / each rill’s purling is as full / of local cadence
as a brain
Summer night In the page of
a night's life / an elongation of a thought / within a dark.
/ The clink / of a goat’s chain
Text on a Moorish fountain Standing
wave / in a flow’s thought / rests upon an origin
The
boundary, never to be crossed The boundary, never
to be crossed / goes always with me: the walk away / cannot be
done
‘The echoic world beyond’ The
echoic world beyond / the window's high arch / one hand on each
sash-case
The
inverted vault of character Steep-sided lake
between the hills / a trait of character
The prevailing purview of the seasons The
prevailing purview of the seasons / in the landward turning of
the bush
‘The
senses change with hours’ The senses change
with hours. Sight, now / where once I could not see a thing,
no hand / before no face
‘The future thing against a sky’ The
future thing against a sky / in motion and an edge, pulls / as
a long desire, the sense of self
‘The voice of praise’ The
voice of praise / diminishes another
The words come The words come
/ as a full grey sky / above the towns / unseen before the day
‘Two
darks, one night, open eyes’ Two darks, one
night, open eyes, / an ochre moon that, heavy, widens as it wanes
‘Understated’ Understated
/ muted / all stopped down. / Epitomized
Walking away He wakens, / mornings,
/ on a heath, // mornings, /in a cell
‘What I said was heard’ What
I said was heard: / for there was no echo
Where? Stable sight. Maybe. Not here,
/ but in a franker mode of time / where all that is, is sensed
‘Where the roads fork’Where
the roads fork / sentiences grow - / a moment's baulk / beneath
the spread of leaves
eleven of these
poems are presented here:
click the underlined titles