#2419 -- in the salt mine

 

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16.viii.26

in the salt mine

 

once was sea

 

now everything –

floor, wall, ceiling

salt

 

with a pickaxe, with a hammer

 

gnomes overnight

up to old tricks

 

so many steps

and rails and carts

 

whole forest

holding it up

 

all done with tallow lamps

 

blinkered beasts raise water

 

doors and halls

all carved

 

a statue of the king in the mountain

 

of course a dragon

that’s for luck

 

it’s the miracle we’re here

 

knock and you’re led off

 

rope ladders

slippery poles

 

a good ghost

looks after

 

a pillar thereof

no looking back

 

and when the dark comes

and the dark will come

 

you could get lost down here

 

#2418 -- a birch tremble

 

2418

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15.viii.26

a birch tremble

 

how lovely the woods

before the way

when no one’s here to see

not a leaf’s out of place

 

just the idea of squirrel

the colour of bird

 

how lovely the heart

before the church is built

before the bricks are piled

when mind is open to the sky still

 

just the wings, all sizes, shapes

just the clouds gone by

 

it’s wonderful the poem

how its truth is known

before we find the words

 

sound and sign suffice

 

some say awe

that the day declines

to this least breeze

    this tremble

 

and further still

         to stars

#2417 -- yet another last judgement

 

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yet another last judgement

ekphrastic for Hieronymous Bosch van Aken’s c. 1550 ‘Last Judgement’

 

some bestial business, the antics of insects

 

the gulp, the excrescence

 

a certain amount of skull

ladder to the open egg

 

mainly it’s sex

 

the monkey faces

and everyone surrenders to

this is how it goes

 

some are pregnant, some give birth

 

little thrones for minor demons

 

 

you get an arrow in the bum

there’s a trumpet there too

knives to make the point

 

pig in nun’s habit for your pleasure

 

some protect themselves from the sun

   with long playing records

 

duck, crouch down

 

bags of wind, punishment queues

surfing on a tide of blood

all thw magic tricks

 

lie down – be consumed

 

do it

you know you want to

 

the ones with wings prod you on

 

and it’s the last chance

 

spill the entrails

become a tree

 

the city is burning just as imagined

 

that just happens to be how we’re here

 

there are a few sleep through it all

they know life is but a dream

 

#2416 -- all teeth

 

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13.viii.26

all teeth

ekphrastic for Si On’s ‘The Magic of Women and Other Stories’

 

suppose a body

of shattered mirrors

 

so the skull shows branded

        ribs tell

              itch

 

smooth where you see into the wall

 

and so perhaps you too reveal

 

dangle of chains, innids plastic

 

mostly we’re on fire

 

words beaten from a grief

 

or love spew

 

a dysphoric flower

 

lolly, gun, grip

 

the slippers empty now

 

mainly, though, the teeth

 

#2415 -- life is a tree

 

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12.viii.26

life is a tree

 

always was

 

a tree where I’m not

and a tree where I am

 

fingers of light fell through

 

a sky lit day, night

more than one

but many

 

so the seasons for the record

 

so a city is these ruins made

 

life is a tree however

 

saw myself, puddle up

 

we, too

a voice lost

 

claws gone

in among branches

 

see the brickwork, paint gone

 

a song like smoke

just a breeze to take home

 

we will build another tree, they say

 

who’ll see through how?

 

a tree was always there

 

some come from it, bow

as limbs to a breeze

and gather

 

all that is lost

to the air

to soil

 

sometimes out of the crack in a cliff

from nowhere

thin as air

 

the seed puts out

with gravity

rises as it falls

 

life is a tree

shows how to become

 

a pause and the rings run round

 

the very stars in awe

 

a tree shines

in the hours unkept

 

shows what it is to be

winning the inaugural Southerly Prize

 

#2414 -- the world is snow

 

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11.viii.26

the world is snow

ekphrastic for Józef Chelmónski’s 1868 ‘Four Horses in fron of a Cottage’

 

the village is winter

 

red skirt and scarf

the kind of joke you shouldn’t tell

 

better the shoes with the holes than none

 

horses tread the day to slush

 

bare trees and a smoke grey sky to bury

 

leaning into the breath you can see

 

dark of a doorway

and distance is dark

 

bells ring far for a doom

 

snow  is clean where no one goes

 

there is a further desolation

 

night is to fall on these faces

 

dogs leap for their joy