by Alice Oswald
somebody out late talking in the street
not many of us left no shop long weeds in the hedges
it’s as dull as a pond down here what a hiss in the throat
having been gassed in the war that voice is are you listening
is that somebody’s bed-ridden red face peering out
won’t barely go out of the house now is that smoke
are they burning the trees again say what you like
she won’t like that not many of us left
so many names in this place not many of us left
living on the last we can find can you hear this
somebody out peering out not me noticed the least likely
the very soul of respectability
eating something in the cemetery not rats I hope are you listening
listen somebody’s sister the very soul of respectability
without one word of a lie just this very morning
being in her slippers having recently put out the trash
had the misfortune to die over the dustbins in the snow
Lyn Waters
of course somebody had to shift her say what you like
just saw him with a grim look
put her in the car boot cold as a trout
with a bit of green silk around the middle to protect against rheumatism
[...]
somebody as barely there as light as a lace curtain
lying in the nettles with her teeth upwards
couldn’t lift herself
been living off nettles for a week hence the expression
somebody on her knees again not what she was
somebody screaming again last night being strangled or something
good grief you get used to the sounds not many of us left
living on the fluff of green of the last little floes of the earth
VERTIGO
May I shuffle forward and tell you the two-minute life of rain
starting right now lips open and lidless-cold all-seeing gaze
when something not yet anything changes its mind like me
and begins to fall
in the small hours
and the light is still a flying carpet
only a little white between worlds like an eye opening
after an operation
no turning back
each drop is a snap decision
a suicide from the tower-block of heaven
and for the next ten seconds
the rain stares at the ground
sees me stirring here
as if sculpted in porridge
sees the garden in the green of its mind already drinking
and the grass lengthening
stalls
maybe a thousand feet above me
a kind of yellowness or levity
like those tiny alterations that brush the legs of swimmers
lifts the rain a little to the left
no more than a flash of free-will
until the clouds close their options and the whole
melancholy air
surrenders to pure fear and
falls
and I who live in the basement
one level down from the world
with my eyes to the insects with my ears to the roots
listening
I feel them in my bones these dead straight lines
coming closer and closer to my core
this is the sound this is the very floor
where Grief and his Wife are living
looking up
LOOKING DOWN
Clouds: I can watch their films in puddles
passionate and slow without obligations of shape or stillness
I can stand with wilted neck and look
directly into the drowned corpse of a cloud
it is cold-blooded down there
precisely outlined as if under a spell
and it narrows to a weighted point which
throws back darkness
oh yes there is a trembling rod that hangs my head above puddles
and the clouds like trapped smoke wander under me
and the sun lies discarded on the tarmac
like an old
white
shoe
don’t go on about those other clouds
those high pre-historic space-ferns
that steam the windows of the wind
I know I could look up and see them
curled like fossils in the troposphere
but I am here
I have been leaning here a long time hunched
under the bone lintel of my stare
with the whole sky
dropped and rippling through my eye
and now a crow on a glass lens
slides through the earth
ALONGSIDE BEANS
Weeding alongside beans in the same rush as them
6 a.m. scrabbling at the earth
beans synchronised in rows
soft fanatical irresponsible beans
behind my back
breaking out of their mass grave
at first, just a rolled-up flag
then a bayonet a pair of gloved hands
then a shocked corpse hurrying up in prayer
and then another
and then (as if a lock had gone and the Spring had broken loose)
a hoverfly
not looking up but lost in pause
landing its full-stop
on a bean leaf
(and what a stomach bursting from its straps
what a nervous readiness attached to its lament and
using the sound as a guard rail over the drop)
and then another
and after a while a flower
turning its head to the side like a bored emperor
and after a while a flower
singing out a faint line of scent
and spinning around the same obsession with its task
and working with the same bewitched slightly off-hand look
as the sea
covering first one place
and then another
and after a while another place
and then another place
and another
and another
A DRINK FROM CRANMERE POOL
Amphibious vagueness
neither pool nor land
under whose velvet
three rivers spring to their tasks
in whose indecent hills
tired of my voice
I followed the advice of water
knelt and put my mouth
to a socket in the grass
as if to an outlet of my own
unveiled stoneliness
and sleepless flight
they say the herons used to hang
like lamps here giving off gloom
now walkers float
on the wings of their macs
to this weephole
where you can taste
almost
not water exactly
SLOWED-DOWN BLACKBIRD
Three people in the snow
getting rid of themselves
breath by breath
and every six seconds a blackbird
three people in raincoats losing their tracks in the snow
walking as far as the edge and back again
with the trees exhausted
tapping at the sky
and every six seconds a blackbird
first three then two
passing one eye between them
and the eye is a white eraser rubbing them away
and on the edge a blackbird
trying over and over its broken line
trying over and over its broken line
DUNT: A POEM FOR A DRIED-UP RIVER
Very small and damaged and quite dry,
a Roman water nymph made of bone
tries to summon a river out of limest
one
very eroded faded
her left arm missing and both legs from the knee down
a Roman water nymph made of bone
tries to summon a river out of limestone
exhaustedutterly worn down
a Roman water nymph made of bone
being the last known speaker of her language
she tries to summon a river out of limestone
little distant sound of dry grasstry again
a Roman water nymph made of bone
very endangered now
in a largely unintelligible monotone
she tries to summon a river out of limestone
little distant sound as of dry grasstry again
exquisite bone figurine with upturned urn
in her passionate self-esteem she smiles looking sideways
she seemingly has no voice but a throat-clearing rustle
as of dry grasstry again
she tries leaning
pouring pure outwardness out of a grey urn
little slithering sounds as of a rabbit man in full night-gear,
who lies so low in the rickety willowherb
that a fox trots out of the woods
and over his back and awaytry again
she tries leaning
pouring pure outwardness out of a grey urn
little lapping soundsyes
as of dry grass secretly drinkingtry again
little lapping soundsyes
as of dry grass secretly drinkingtry again
Roman bone figurine
year after year in a sealed glass case
having lost the hearing of her surroundings
she struggles to summon a river out of limestone
little shuffling sound as of approaching slippers
year after year in a sealed glass case
a Roman water nymph made of bone
she struggles to summon a river out of limestone
little shuffling sound as of a nearly dried-up woman
not really moving through the fields
having had the gleam taken out of her
to the point where she resembles twilighttry again
little shuffling clicking
she opens the door of the church
little distant sounds of shut-away singingtry again
little whispering fidgeting of a shut-away congregation
wondering who to pray to
little patter of eyes closingtry again
very small and damaged and quite dry
a Roman water nymph made of bone
she pleads she pleads a river out of limestone
little hobbling tripping of a nearly dried-up river
not really moving through the fields,
having had the gleam taken out of it
to the point where it resembles twilight.
little grumbling shivering last-ditch attempt at a river
more nettles than watertry again
very speechless very broken old woman
her left arm missing and both legs from the knee down
she tries to summon a river out of limestone
little stoved-in sucked thin
low-burning glint of stones
rough-sleeping and trembling and clinging to its rights
victim of Swindon
puddle midden
slum of over-greened foot-churn and pats
whose crayfish are cheap tool-kits
made of the mud stirred up when a stone’s lifted
it’s a pitiable likeness of clear running
struggling to keep up with what’s already gone
the boat the wheel the sluice gate
the two otters larricking alonggo on
and they say oh they say
in the days of better rainfall
it would flood through five valleys
there’d be cows and milking stools
washed over the garden walls
and when it froze you could skate for five milesyes go on
little loose end shorthand unrepresented
beautiful disused route to the sea
fish path with nearly no fish in
TWO VOICES
I own the dawn! the cockerel claims. The light
still loiters with intent to take the night.
Wind steals through woods, the democratic dew
gives equal weight to everything. A few
blank seconds and he starts again. He yawns
and voice possesses him. I own all dawns!
I stand on dignity! he shouts out, shut
in the dark kingdom of his one-room flat.
More pained possessive crazed each time he crows
he has to wrench his larynx, curl his claws
to let that shout surge through him. Glancing out
I notice nothing answers except light,
whose answer makes the earth’s hairs stand on end
and shadows fall full-length without a sound.
What is the word for wordless, when the ground
bursts into crickets? There’s a creaking sound
like speaking speeded up. A skeleton
crawls across leaves, still in its cramped position.
one minute stooping on a bending blade
rubbing its painful elbows, next minute made
of pinged elastic, flying hypertense,
speaking in several languages at once.
not like a mouth might speak, more like two hands
make whispered contact through their finger-ends,
like light itself which absent-mindedly
brushes the grass and speaks by letting be,
but when you duck down suddenly and stare
into the startled stems, there’s nothing there.
SUNDAY BALLAD
A questioner called Light appeared,
with probe and beam
began to search the room
where two lay twined in bed.
whose intellect surpassing theirs
with no regard
for things half-dressed
accused them of old age
as weak as eggs they woke.
they thought their bodies
gleaming in the window-square
felt less like age than air
oh no not quite
in blue pedantic Light
two doors away two trees
made less of leaves than sound
as if to prove them wrong
described the wind
and as they dressed the dust
flew white and silent through the house
YOU MUST NEVER SLEEP UNDER A MAGNOLIA
when the tree begins to flower
like a glimpse of
Flesh
when the flower begins to smell
as if its roots have reached
the layer of
Thirst upon the
unsealed jar of
Joy
Alice, you should
never sleep under
so much pure pale
so many shriek-mouthed blooms
as if Patience
had run out of
Patience
ASIDE
In Berkshire somewhere 1970
I hid in a laurel bush outside a house,
planted in gravel I think.
I stopped running and just pushed open
its oilskin flaps and settled down
in some kind of waiting room, whose scarred boughs
had clearly been leaning and kneeling there
for a long time. They were bright black.
I remember this Museum of Twilight
was low-ceilinged and hear-through
as through a bedroom window
one hears the zone of someone’s afternoon
being shouted and shouted in, but by now
I was too evergreen to answer, watching
the woodlice at work in hard hats
taking their trolleys u
p and down.
through longer and longer interims
a dead leaf fell, rigidly yellow and slow.
so by degrees I became invisible
in that spotted sick-room light
and nobody found me there.
the hour has not yet ended in which
under a cloth of laurel
I sat quite still.
Sz
good morning to you, first faint breeze of unrest
no louder than the sound of the ear unzipping,
late-comer, mere punctuation between seasons
whom the Chinese call
Sz
forgive me, small-mouth,
I heard you criticise the earth
and stepped outside to see the fields ruffle your cloth,
but you were moving on:
monotonous
vindictive
dust-bearing
scrupulous
one of many mass-produced particles of time
by whom the fruit has small frost-marks
and their hearts are already eroded and I
too
if you think, leaf-thief,
if you think I care
about your soft-spoken
head-in-the-clouds
seizure of another and yet another and yet another hour
