from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Thursday, 31 May 2012

moment

Forgetting for a moment

bloodshed in Syria
rabbits in labs
clubbed seal-cubs
that lamb with the pecked-out eyes

the world is as simple
as foxglove, skylark
this new dog rose, creamy
scent of honeysuckle
where here from the warm dark soil
nubs of beans rise hump-backed
cotyledons poised like lungs
or stubby wings

before it all floods in again

come roost in my heart
bean, lamb, broken-bodied child –
may it be big enough
to hold you all





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2 comments:

  1. Roz Cawley31 May 2012 at 22:51

    Roselle, you staunch the bleeding heart of the world with your compassionate words. Thank you for speaking so exquisitely of that which makes me speechless. xxx

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  2. roselle1 June 2012 at 14:33

    Roz, that helps a lot. Thanks as always for your generosity. I was v hesitant about posting that one, but all week have felt a bit choked with this aspect of the world – since Syria's latest, perhaps, and also after re-reading Carolyn Forche's exquisite and painful collection 'The Country Between Us', about the atrocities a few decades ago in El Salvador – and writing that has enabled me to move through and write again (when actually I wanted to turn away from the pain and therefore couldn't let it in to process it). It IS how it is, isn't it – it too needs acknowledging.

    Love and gratitude to you, Roz xx

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