by Sam Sampson
‘How sing the forms the eye apprehends in the green world? Sam Sampson here – while reimagining the venerable tradition of the “shaped poem” – asks us to rethink our assumptions about the limits of poetic speech and presentational immediacy. The result is a reverential and deeply lyrical voyage of discovery, a celebration of things seen and sounded anew.’ – Michael Palmer, author of Thread
‘Halcyon Ghosts reads as an investigation of the Romantic scored serially. A collection of delicately composed cartography / scenography / choreography, and yet such rich language. Words in flight.’ – Ian Wedde, author of The Lifeguard
Sam Sampson
Halcyon Ghosts
Contents
The Kid
•
Halcyon Ghosts
Erasure
Doubled Lexicon
Flushed from a Tidal Retreat
All the Everlasting Cataracts
•
I Spilled My Story
•
Broken Architecture
A Strange Harvest . . . A
The Tombstone Epitaph
Unearthed Vestiges
She is Sparrow-like and Fierce
•
Six Reels of Joy
for Doris May Scotting
Hand in hand with equal plod they go. In the free hands — no. Free empty hands. Backs turned both bowed with equal plod they go. The child hand raised to reach the holding hand. Hold the old holding hand. Hold and be held. Plod on and never recede. Slowly with never a pause plod on and never recede. Backs turned. Both bowed. Joined by held holding hands. Plod on as one. One shade. Another shade. — Samuel Beckett
& Lucia Torrance Sampson
The Kid
Watch Charlie Chaplin un-
wind
listen in-
tently to that blind
mazy course
running wild
through all forms of mim-
icry, fun-making and clog-dancing
childhood imbroglio
old-school sheet music
where landscapes are raised
used stamps stick
a trio for three bassoons
a lane of horse-chesnut trees
a red bus turns
this city past, passing . . . the Queen’s Head
the horse-drawn bakery van
the booby hatch
... framed fixtures
streams from some old world mix . . .
tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor . . .
..............................
where pigs roamed
a mill :
villagers peasants, villains
three craftsmen two slaves, one tramp
the total number housed
in a small brick building
rebuilt twice
built from playground to dalliance . . .
rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief
..............................
Doris May . . . re-
visit this institution :
1931
a school for the orphaned and destitute children
modern times .................. rest-
oration . . . O on song we’ll-
get along :
(in time)
as body shadow
and light ... reel
a-shrug-and-a-kick
come-shadow-shadow-come
and cut . . .
(on film)
mirror images . . .
over-
lapping scraps . . .
the evanescent
smile (likeness) chorus
of that unknown
. . . lady, baby, gypsy, queen.
in memory of my grandmother
... and I dreamed we were still alive
dreamed we were not yet born
dreamed we were yet to be.
— Michael Palmer, Thread
We are as free as birds. Only the birds aren’t free.
We are as committed as birds and identically.
— John Cage
Erasure
history in a nearby tree
isolated sightings (aligned by absence): huia extinct
for Don Binney, artist, conservationist
Doubled Lexicon
the horizon
O
pens
the circle
Sobin
circles the expanse expands dirt
distributes
the liquescent
ellipse :
the glittering ......... geometric design
of the glass-headed light
________________________________________
two in-
complete oblong drops
the pond of the Olive Tree
O
pens
the mirror
shadows swing the windrow
:
ground
rocky outcrops: composed of chalk and green sand
composed of shelly sandstone cliffs
layers, over-
laying clays, marly macigno
the lignite field
________________________________________
erasure links the sentence
sentences the
pause
recesses the sun
O
pens
the corridor
(structure up-
dates a staircase disappears . . .
ceramic wind chimes
charred grape seeds
Ionian soft paste
pinkish circular bands)
registers
as rectangular frames
the utterance
awkward doubled lexicon
two diagonal lines
at right angles
the child centre it-
self dead-centre
O
________________________________________
pens
the footnote
calibrates . . .
passage
caresses the eye-
lid-en
closed circumference deeply etched
ligated to the (be-
clouded) presence of identical blocks
printed in raw clay.
________________________________________
for Gustaf Sobin
Flushed from a Tidal Retreat
in the deep-freeze we
will feel no pain
just go to sleep (as if winter was coming)
it is ‘asleep’
as in Rosei’s dream
watermarked origami
from the fold butter-
fly logic
to be : becalmed
afloat with the telling
sail said the lullaby
scissoring and . . . captioned
...
elevation commotion and roseate histrionics
to see hills I didn’t even know existed | rain transforming this patch |
spring eagles returning to the same nest | bodies - each in foetal position
| suicidal Inuit youth shackled hand-to-heart . . .
...
quieter moments when fights for food abate
... fog shrouds Snyder lake | a deer fords the main branch | riparian light
blinking on a dark field | the grotto where tradition states Jesus was
born,
after descendants, not everyone believes : believes, fragrant
pastures celebrate love | jaguar dancers torment the mineral kingdom,
and the whorls (many coated) turn . . . El Niño churns in, disarming | the
last war is not over
...
under the masked avatar
the body wills its i
ncarnation
... electrical improvisations
the young born miniature adjuncts
(((collisions beneath the moon)))
ghost moths generate night skirmishes
wing-tips
shadowing the wall
they balance at mechanical rest
a fold: one ghost upon
another
...
leverage in memory
a rift between
for instance try
to replace
(mise-en-scène)
no need for excavations
the process gifted
grown in wild streams
FLUSHED FROM A TIDAL RETREAT
RUSHED FROM A TIDAL RETREAT
Shhh.
i.m. of my father, perched 40 years above Little Muddy Creek
All the Everlasting Cataracts
near at hand
rip-cords surround the centre
gurge of pulse
on / oft
to sometimes detect
actual remnants
to look up, and tell of this fractal shape
one gradual solitary star
which comes upon silence
...
fragments______
that word startled up
filled in, in pencil
a transcript: the story dawned outlines
nerveless, script-less, dead-
ends felt in every feature
eyes closed: bowed head listening to the earth
to an ever-revolving spiel
...
trace : tracer
one of two great circles
intersection: right angles at poles
nadir: the low
zenith the high
circles and arcs
broad-belting colure
sages, keen-eyed astrologers
earth-bound evangelists
they study the sky
study the fault lines
(the god and sunrise)
both, and both in one
all along a dismal rack of clouds
upon the boundaries of day and night
a drifting mass
cloud
on
cloud
the sky in-
verse
...
nineteenth century
slow-breathed melodies,
like a rose in vermeil tint and shape
enter, but who entertains?
effigies, visions, extras . . .
opaline forms
amorphous
: pictures of intimacy
all the everlasting cataracts
... pools
loops these crystalline pavilions
pure fields mantled by sea salt
...
re-cast the self-
same beat
in hollow shells
in the cadence of time
where a dead branch fell, there did it rest . . .
reset to follow, to turn and lead the way
a stream went voiceless by (streamed)
mountainous: no shape extinguishable
when the bleak-gown pines
when winter lifts his voice, a noise
the mysterious grate of wind in trees
whether in calm or storm
(the same scene)
god of the sky : bookish séance
that old spirit-leaved book
sifted well . . . from the ion-universe
...
flames yield like mist
all calm through chaos and darkness
from chaos and darkness
the extraordinary
the constant . . . the inter-
nal law and how
I
whether through conviction, or disdain
in this expressive line
quicken the patter of beads
(pearl beads drop-
ping from their string
ele-
mental nature
powerful similes
ponderous millstones)
...
appearance of strength
a deception masking real weakness
essence in its tent
before the winged thing
silver wings of dawn rising
now a silver line hints at this approach
in each face a glint of light
see how the light breaks in with this line
(haphazardly)
till suddenly a splendour
like morning
the horizon in noise
...
at the set of sun
light fades
first from the eastern sky
to one who travels from the dusking east
attributes of the wanderer
wondering in vain about
the inventor of god and music
of light and song
soft breaking noise
white melodious throat
a name signifies memory
would come as no mystery
pin-pricks of the world . . . name-sakes
for me variance
by knowledge only
the above and the below
gathering all things mortal
this endless commencing
this still,
steady light
brilliance
of the moon
O
independence
acknowledges no allegiance.
after John Keats’s ‘Hyperion’
I Spilled My Story
a raft plunged . . .
picadored green people tethered to years wend their way, squawking
about an adventure without a conch, conversation you could swim in, also
magnify . . .
bubbles . . . well-warped logicians . . . ionised passages
a deep-freeze refrigerates escapades and layers link the lake
the ice harvest
V-shaped bars scene perched in Voice: loud hoo-hoooo . . . bee, ze,
ey, ay . . . headlamps, holes in the skull saw and lift off . . . to enlarge
we head upstairs over to the room full of holes . . . sylvan slums
O bright suit, white from place of the cruel rook, return
then be done
(antiques draped in velvets)
moth wired in the aquarium (this scene is allowed)
voice ambushes and we are built to divine perseverance, orange amplified
with cedar-beak : interior wall . . . active aviary . . . bees breeze
I have a number of poems
containing the known, the lowest, the hole in the middle.
I manage to stop myself like that. No not embarrassed. Finally
to stop. Rest. Turn on the lights . . . the duration beneath tense
artifice: black : bulging, comprised of sea urchins (all which are
whiter if a bit starfish fades) . . .
... exclusivity dwells in habitat
adaptable from desert to compass rose, the inherent nature of
construction. Cubist images: violins and guitars analogous to
costumes later designed as conforming to the soul . . . there
are several areas of debate, the capacity of a single imagination:
emotion for analysis and the claims of a photographer detailing
colour with interest in the arc of a possible cause
(a likely cause which cannot leave a trace was omitted)
transparent blues, the trance of celestial parades . . .
Eden, Lion, where beginnings grow easily, pleasing to the eye as to the
general public, rest in these plants, the commonly grown cactus . . . go
west vagrant Tas wrote:
I can tell from here . . . what the inhabitants of Venus are like: they resemble the
Moors, burned by the sun, full of wit and fire, always in love, writing verse,
fond of music
&nb
sp; ... and Deimos glows from afar (Pro webcam activated: Mars image:
Phobos and Deimos, November 3)
I wait, resight it (usually offer the right choice)
head submerged 1-2-3 white eggs ring the river, numbers have the
capacity to sing thereby demonising forests . . . 4-5-6 at any time the
formation of ants sympathetic to the vibrational sounds of the poem,
alas howling engineers called for more and ships set sail across Kashmir
... wings, wailers and frescoes offset as trees, such a tongue, virtually
tongue lightning against the ceiling, clarification: conservation mainly
a tiny layer of soil, aeration critical of dots, the abundance of the Red Sea
and upon a smaller scale Atlantis, that bug-eyed canary, black-finned,
bluish-purple . . .
all year minute fish
stripes, silver below, Jan-June, Oct, above jets that are in fact outlines,
true bullet points dictating ancient records, momentarily plumes of
thought matched opposite beetles, days wed to cyclical support coupons:
