Tuesday, 26 May 2015

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 31




The Truth of These Materials

A yew-hedged lovers’ knot, parterre of last words
and campanula, suggests a future without ghosts.
Even now
the dial motto straddles light and shadow.

Beyond the garden, lagoons and heavy leaves
and the bloodspurt of wings
breaking cover— what hour?

Skimmed stones make hatchet cuts on water.
The plumed crescents jag and settle back
to steady lapping.

Love likens each to each and then abandons,
the present’s picnic quilt of cumulus betrayed to rain.

But stones are not clouds, nor will these lies save you.

Here in the Devonian
between the wet and dry, a fish,
considering the occurrence of the weather, walks,
thin-boned on fins, gulping at the sky.

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