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

Friday 22 July 2011

and then there are other days

Just to counter yesterday's writing, here's one of my poems from Looking For Icarus (bluechrome 2005; hopefully to be reissued by IDP).

This one won a small prize somewhere or other.


Against the Ice
Contra el agua, diás de fuego  Paz
 
There are mornings when you wonder
how anything ever turns out right -
 
when we’re all refugees trudging scorched soil
without hope; without anything;
 
yet in the face of all odds
snowdrops still break iceblack soil
 
swollen plums blush in the August sun
despite pollution, genetics and sprays
 
and there are insects who still know
what pollen to merge with which.
 
 
Then there are evenings when out of the stillness
a huge wind rises to stride through the leaves
 
and sets fat drops of rain glistening
like fairy-lights amongst the mulberries;
 
And times when the voice of a blackbird
breaks you open
 
and you go out into everything, your heart
on fire like a sunflower in a landscape
 
that ripples with song, with something
that cannot be suppressed.
 
 
 
- Roselle Angwin
 

2 comments:

  1. love it - especially the bit about the wind

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks B! :-)

    Once I'm through this weekend - writing from life day and novel day here at home - I'll be working with your final assignment. It'll be sad to conclude this process...

    ReplyDelete

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