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

Monday 4 November 2013

Darkness is not yet all around (poem)



I think how much I love this space
its flavour of study and silence,
the fire ticking, the lamplight’s circle
thrown on the ceiling like a Communion wafer 
or the moon’s disc, whose rays
have so recently rested on the faces of people I love
while the storm has whumped and flustered
at the walls and panes, and the flames
in the hearth have kept time with the dog’s
contented groanings
                                     and I think perhaps
that I like best of all this moment
at the end of the day, quiet in here a little longer
with everyone gone, but only just
so something of each still lingers –
and their poems, careful as prayers
still scenting the late autumn afternoon’s air.


© Roselle Angwin, 2nd November 2013 



3 comments:

  1. There's something so intoxicating about the end of the day stillness experienced indoors. Something does linger on...

    Here's a recent poem about stillness outdoors, experienced, imaginatively from above!


    Thermal


    After the push-pull pummelling,
    leaving the grass sponged and matted,

    the air damp and brackish
    paused in the pirouette of air-streams,

    comes the dance of the curvatures:
    hang gliders, teasing freedom.

    They turn their tips to each other,
    extending as if in a masque,

    brushing with an open hand
    swathes of rust and russet,

    plastering the creases of hills
    like a rain belt on a weather map.


    Julius Smit

    ReplyDelete
  2. Julius! How lovely to hear from you; and what a beautiful poem. Thank you. Something's shifted in your work, perhaps? It feels more integrated, somehow, tighter at the same time as more fluid, if that makes any sense; but with your usual artist's eye for lush visual detail. And: do you remember this poem from South Hooe, using each others' donated words?? 'Sky a decoction of bleed colours shingling the water; orange cartwheels of light / from the far bank; actuality of avocet.' I think the last 3 were yours? Rx

    ReplyDelete
  3. PS Julius I love this couplet: 'plastering the creases of hills /
    like a rain belt on a weather map.'

    ReplyDelete

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