by Alice Oswald
then hear me, Sz,
you are so bodiless, so barely there
that I can only see you through starlings
whom you try this way and that like an uncomfortable coat
and then abandon
EVENING POEM
Old scrap-iron foxgloves
rusty rods of the broken woods
what a faded knocked-out stiffness
as if you’d sprung from the horse-hair
of a whole Victorian sofa buried in the mud down there
or at any rate something dropped from a great height
straight through flesh and out the other side
has left your casing pale and loose and finally
just a heap of shoes
they say the gods being so uplifted
can’t really walk on feet but take tottering steps
and lean like this closer and closer to the ground
which gods?
it is the hours on bird-thin legs
the same old choirs of hours
returning their summer clothes to the earth
with the night now
as if dropped from a great height
falling
TITHONUS
46 MINUTES IN THE LIFE OF THE DAWN
It is said that the dawn fell in love with Tithonus and asked Zeus to make him immortal, but forgot to ask that he should not grow old. Unable to die, he grew older and older until at last the dawn locked him in a room where he still sits babbling to himself and waiting night after night for her appearance.
What you are about to hear is the sound of Tithonus meeting the dawn at midsummer. His voice starts at 4.17, when the sun is six degrees below the horizon, and stops 46 minutes later, at sunrise. The performance will begin in darkness.
as soon as dawn appears
as soon as dawn appears
4:17 dressed only in her clouds
and murk hangs down over hills as if guilty
two rooks quite high above steel blue still a star
and something similar to laughter moves up from below making ducks distracted
two sounds you can hear at this tucked-up hour
when a man rolls over and pulls his grief to his chin and his feet have no covers
first this: the sound of everything repeating
then this: the sound of everything repeating
as soon as dawn appears and the river without interfering steals into the morning
bleak shapes of the last efforts of the night
and half-formed faces float out and vanish too undulating to be actual
as soon as a voice goes on arguing in its sleep like a file going to and corrosively fro
doesn’t sound like a man sounds more like an instrument’s voice very small
so the thought goes on recycling itself and the mouth opens and the body begins to shrivel into something more portable
which is me old unfinished not yet gone here I go again
as soon as a hand whose hand as soon as the fingers feel for the clock
4:22 the village is lost in its veils a few dreams lean over the lanes like nettles
here come cascades of earliness in which everything is asked is it light is it light is it light
the horizon making only muffled answers but moisture on leaves is quick to throw glances
and bodiless black lace woods in which one to another a songbird asks
is it light is it light
not quite
as soon as the half moon looks lost for words
as soon as an old man frozen on his way to bed begins to melt and smudges his nose-drip
and cautiously puts his hand between his ribs and feels something wet and sweet like stewed apple this must be the heart this is only a dream
when a man rolls over and sighs
very nearly anonymous now having recently turned five thousand with the same wedge of yearning lodged in my chest as ever
and getting accustomed to surviving like a bramble very good at growing anywhere you ought to praise me for this trailing bloom this must be the heart this is only a dream
when a man rolls over and sighs
very nearly anonymous now having recently turned five thousand with the same wedge of yearning lodged in my chest as ever
and getting accustomed to surviving like a bramble very good at growing anywhere
and hearing myself churring and wheezing
and hearing myself through a chink in my head examining the whole horizonless question of desire this must be the heart this must be my innermost thought this is only a dream
when a man rolls over and sighs
yes night after night he lies enamelled by the whitening sky
and first the damp and then the dawn appear
which hold him here so hunger-eyed he can’t quite
die
and so his mouth on grey wings ascends being sucked away
as soon as old thin and bone did you ever hear such an insult
jumps up amorous and cracking his joints with excitement goes on goes on babbling to himself
draped to the chin in a dust-sheet like a ghost’s napkin and takes his teaspoon of meat-juice
which is me again old leaky-mouth eternal evening leaning towards morning but she as if too live to last defers her closeness
only a smirk of mauve on a cloud’s edge
it’s 4:25 I thought I heard myself being looked for what is it I said what is it madam that you wish to imply
she lets four seedheads show up knotted against mud in hard exacting detail
she never quite completes her sentence but is always almost
and this is what draws me to the window this huge fragment broken off with the mind-spire winding through it also unfinished
Music
she never quite completes her sentence but is always almost
and this is what draws me to the window too late I notice my head still balanced on my neck but severed by light from myself not knowing but almost
what a non-sequitur from a seagull at the height of falling
as soon as one rook too black goes into smoky trees saying nothing and the wood still lost in its inmost unable
and mist forms an orderly queue for the horizon
green ropes of wind white silks of field
and buried under several feet of colour the eyes can never quite see out but it is glittering now in the gaps between things
and the thistle begins to be properly named and certain of its spikes
what a chandelier of dock flowers dangles from the ground inverted
so the morning and I meet up again but not on talking terms
Music
now a snail the speechless tongue of one who is introverted and clings to leaves
pokes out of sleep too feelingly as if a heart had been tinned and opened
now laughing mallards pull themselves together
now swans make straight lines across water
now webs on twigs now the rapid whisper of a grasshopper scraping back and forth as if working at rust
and now a gorse bush as I glance towards it a sort of swelling yellowness a smelling somehowness
barely keeps still enough to be certain
while a fern unfolds growing outside the time zone
now 4:32 now 4:33
now a lark in a prayer-draught shakes the air
and the hour is quickened by crows with their rusty voice-handles
and pre-world owls too impartial to be swayed
and ear-splitting over-actual blackbirds
and magpies coming straight from a meeting with misfortune
oh the whistles in the bushes have never heard of evenings
and new-born tunes know nothing of my thick-skinned listening
now being washed by a single thrush
rewinding and grieving
rewinding and grieving
and now the first wood doves start up litigations in the trees
I can
’t help thinking of birds’ heads thrust forwards it makes excitements even to say so
slow-motion puffs of mood getting ready to ascend with drapery lifted and tiny dandruff weed-flowers
there is amazement here turning wishfully pink above trees and two sharp slices of seagull weird squawks of night-thoughts trying to dream again
so the voice stumbles and the feet can’t get comfortable and the eyes flicker under so much
peach-pale air apparently peering down and hurrying away and peering down and hurrying backwards away
who could be close to so much cold inspection
it makes me shiver like a dead soldier returning his empty clothes to his bride but she’s married someone else
so the eyes stare and the hands lifted to feel her there curl up like crumpled leaves and fall back to the ground
as soon as the whole sky is laid out long and beginning and muted with damp in a colour of descended hope
and hearing the lurch the well-known slap of joy when bird-verse takes a regular line and the wood is now graffitied on a pale wall
and a great proximity arches overhead
mother of the winds I can’t speak this half-descript unable to unblend itself from things
nothing yet has a shadow everything is here but pale tell me madam why so encrypted
and what precisely is this shining
stuff
it’s just a cloth they answer speaking that rustling speech I always hear it in the grass a bit like sound being reduced to sand
the sky’s a cloth the eye a passer-by with mirrors
behind that cloth another cloth behind that cloth another cloth and then another cloth and then another
Music
Etc.
willows I want to pause and praise you who used to be headstrong and have now forgiven everything
growing lenient and bowed as I am
grasses I’m going to speak your names
like a traveller staring through a newspaper mouthing the headlines
and the page whispers as he reads
and then another thing and then another
and then another thing and then another
as for the sparrows I’ve been watching them embroider their indecisions in brown stitches until the whole valley is darned
then leaving their dusty jackets on the ground
and then another life and then another
and then a chaffinch starts and then another
then self-made moss then midges whose whole surface is a sound-wave
then something the same in every hedge doesn’t speak like a speech
more like an inkling like a ticking like an inner working turning this way and that
you should see the beetle’s fingers feeling forwards for the levers of the earth
they begin to chafe they begin to click they begin to blur they begin to braille
and my voice then speaks with spaces much as a sewing machine might write with no thread a line of small holes
and then another thing and then another
and then a chaffinch starts and then another
and starts and starts
and then a chaffinch starts with a long run-up to reach the same old execration
and a spider looking neither left nor right with the same obsessive unbalanced
then midges the same then bindweed still in her white night clothes in the same long entanglement slightly sticky to the touch
the same dizziness the same life like a metal beam whacks me on the head again as when a man slinks home after battle
alive alive and nobody else was that lucky
who is it trapped in this living shape pushing the door with his hands still covered in blood
and makes some toast and leans like a fold-up stool against the wall and there he still sits the next morning
4.49 with the same old grief as mine is it mine am I home oh how much life not my own have I buttered and eaten
as soon as the grief as soon as a ghost begins to shake me from the inside
as soon as my hair which roots in the very top of the mind where the dead have floated
comes out of crevices unbranched and produces long stems without flowers
as soon as an old man runs his finger along his gums and thinks of his teeth
one or two have gone missing from the little collection left lying in the mouth
if only they had been cleaned and kept in their box
this broken yellow bracelet was once a smile the priceless gift of the family very useful for meetings
what meetings seeing as the very moment is itself a movement
Music
so flies dispute precise points the definitions are written
a kiss gives off a swoosh of amnesia or is it moths letting the mood pass through their feelers and out the other side
when a man dries up and rolls on the ground still speaking
as if brushing away the shock of the dawn
which is a wall of green
which is a small field sliding at the speed of light straight through the house and on to the surface of the eye
which is love’s property
which is light’s equal
which is a beam of dust
which is the classical or fluted style of coming in through curtains
which is a memory
which happens again and again
every morning the same repetition spreads its infection a kiss gives off a swoosh
which is one of light’s moods
which is exhausted
which is waves of forms and folds being added to leaves
and the humorous angular manner of claiming instantly whatever surface is offered
which is mine
the survivor
the makeshift character that springs from speaking and looking on and letting everything pass and then the loneliness of being left here endless lost to my lethargy like a dripping tap
but what a ballast of abdomen what a block of hope what a kleptomaniac what a thief of life
I am
Music
as soon as dawn one star then suddenly none then blue then pale
and the whole apparition only ever known backwards already too late now almost gone
as soon as orange crimson gold
as soon as each tree becomes particular and a working wood emerges and the river begins to speak back with underwater woodland
as soon as the light the first awake as soon as earliness calling softly to the trees to be unsettled please
she whoever she is who gropes for the mind and rips it open as soon as that goddess unconcealed
with the same unspoken sound as dew consents to the ground
and little shadows hurry undecidedly aside quick quick in these final moments of closeness
then at last whatever it is
5.03 as the sun saws the morning into beams
with splintered eyes and incessant insect murmur of a man praying and rubbing his legs and hissing through a crack in his flesh-boards
asks
may I stop please
And so he goes on dwindling away
maybe through too much prayer
is now too rarefied to touch
or settle anywhere
and falls to whispering here
as lost as dust
in darklight under grass
in chorus with unanimous unrest
whose hearsays half-thoughts
