"The Mole" by Ben Wilkinson

Ben Wilkinson's first pamphlet, The Sparks, has been published as part of Tall Lighthouse Press's Pilot initiative for poets under 30. It can be ordered directly from Tall Lighthouse. 

The Mole

In the same way that the stone rolled back

from the cave and the grave-clothed

Lazarus emerged, the earth burst

into mounds on the garden, hunks of turf

disturbed by the seemingly dormant

deep-now-surface diggings of it,

boar or sow. Unmovable, unbiddable

by spade or shout: my father and I

watched from the window, dry-brown

heaps churning gently out; blinking,

aerating and tilling the mineral-dead layers

of blank soil, opening up to a sudden downpour. 

Ben Wilkinson

"The Mole" first appeared in The Times Literary Supplement.

Kristiina Ehin's The Drums of Silence (trans. Ilmar Lehtpere)

Translated from Estonian, The Drums of Silence won The Poetry Society's Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation in 2007. The book can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk. Thanks to George Ttoouli for introducing me to Ehin's work.

you learn a foreign language

and chirp the dark sap of your feelings out

but the tall trees of my childhood

have rolled up their swings

and are fleeing for the sea

"Come what will"

the stars crackle

like fires on marsh islands

"your heart falls into my lap"

the moon is making a heavy rope

from the hair of a corpse

and is coming

down

tonight

"the moon howls"

a good man

puts a woman out to grow like woundwort

*

long so long are the years

but

life is fleeting

"woman of gold"

what are we to believe then

here in this land of tree worshippers

where the pulpits still flow with spilt blood

blood

the tree gods were without

last stanza of "the afternoon sun..."

the time is at hand

when you dance your ungainly dance

rub your hips against your shadow

*

the time is at hand

when the iron door of your heart is open

earthen tiles will not burn

the handrail will not waver

you can see what mineral you're made of

what plain water

what rarefied air

"the time is at hand"

fidelity--rough as a man's cheek

raw meet that draws you close

a trail that remains

a trail that can't be abandoned

last stanza of "I smell you at the crossroads..."

our mouths close

innocence and death

tremble in my nostrils

innocence and death

vibrate in your fingers

*

two days later we were suddenly superfluous

our glances strayed along the muddy town

soaked through

we sat in the snack bar

and didn't see through each other's city faces

"on the way to Siberia"

magnanimous night

the gentle fever of sweet scent

in your hair

opening of "magnanimous night"

woods barren of berries and mercies

"it is a time you can see"

...thoughts those free elusive

swallows

fly hither and thither

looking for food from feelings

"to walk and to walk my own road"

the steep shores of sincerity

"down below the city growls"

I paid and went

in dream's muddy buses

no notion of waking

no fear of inspection

the last stanza of "in a dream"

the day lingers

and it's gone

suddenly even the maps are frozen solid

the last stanza of "fog appears imperceptibly"

icicles drip and

the hall door is open

so we can cry

our laughter out

spring came

over our feathered shoulders

and our hearts were kindled aflame like

cleansing spring fires

"man and bird"

dreams are like deer

shy and self-contained

I am a hunter on the foggy shore of dreams

a hunter who never takes aim

but never takes

her eyes off

first stanza of "dreams are like deer"

"Heroin Song 2"

Removed on 8 July

Roy Fisher's The Thing About Joe Sullivan: Poems 1971-1977

Into the purpose: or out.

There is only, without a tune.

timelessness of desire.

*

What's now only disproved

was once imagined.

first and last stanzas of "Timelessness of Desire"

The light is in the earth if anywhere. This is already the place where it was. We've hardly started, and I want to do it again.

last stanza of "At Once"

Beyond him

a dissolution of my darkness

into such forms

as live there in the space

beyond the clear image of an owl:

forms without image;

pointless to describe.

*

I saw what there was to write and I wrote it.

When it felt what I was doing, it lay down and died under me.

*

The kites are the best sort of gods,

mindless, but all style;

even their capriciousness,

however dominant,

not theirs at all.

*

The pilgrim disposition--

...

domestic to-ing and fro-ing

uncoiled and elongated 

in a dream of purpose.

*

Everything still along its level

except the middle zone, the harbour water,

turbulent with the sunlight

even in calm air.

"Diversions"

Instead there is blankness

and there is grace:

the insistence of the essential,

the sublime made lyrical

at the loss of what's forgotten.

last two stanzas of "Some Loss"

On a ground remarkable for lack of character, sweeps of direction form.

first stanza of "A Poem Not a Picture"

                                      I can

compare what I like to the salts,

to the pot, if there's a pot,

to the winter if there's a winter.

The salts I can compare

to anything there is.

Anything.

last two stanzas of "The Only Image"

If you're living

any decor

can make a wraith of you.

last stanza of "Corner"

                  --the turn

where here and there

change places, the moment

always a surprise: 

on an ordinary day a brief,

lightness, charm between realities;

on a good day, a break

life can flood in and fill.

*

Getting home--getting home somehow,

late, late and small.

*

The cemetery's a valley

of long grass set with marble,

separate as a sea.

*

the din compelling

but irrelevant

has the effect of a silence

*

Travesties of the world

come out of the fog

and rest on the boundary.

"Handsworth Liberties"

Whose is the body you

remember in yourself?

*

The light. The rain. The eye. The rainbow--

horizons form, random and inevitable as rainbows

over bright fields of change.

"Inscriptions for Bluebeard's Castle"

Horizons release skies. 

*

After a fair number of years the distasteful aspects of the whole business became inescapable. Our frustrations will die with us, their particular qualities unsuspected. Or we can make the concrete we're staring at start talking back.

"Rules and Ranges for Ian Tyson"

                             Even

love's not often a poem.

"Of the Empirical Self and For Me"

It was still the same sunless afternoon,

no north or south anywhere in the sky.

*

                                    Some things

are lying in wait in the world, 

walking about in the world,

happening when touched, as they must.

"Staffordshire Red"

"The Duration," a new poem

taken down after a few days, as is my custom

"It Is Writing" by Roy Fisher

IT IS WRITING

Because it could do it well

the poem wants to glorify suffering.

I mistrust it.

I mistrust the poem in its hour of success,

a thing capable of being

tempted by ethics into the wonderful.

Roy Fisher

The Thing About Joe Sullivan: Poems 1971-1977 

(Carcanet, 1978)

The day's on fire! (literally and figuratively!)

A few months ago, Claire Crowther and I decided we'd take a week to write, enclosing ourselves in her and her husband's flat in Somerset (without said husband, lovely though he is). When I  submitted the leave form for work, I could hardly believe I was taking a week off solely for my writing--for years I've combined my visits home with writing rather than going to writers' retreats, but since my father's illness and death (that is, since February '07), it's been harder to set aside the time to do so given increased family responsibilities. 

So this is that week. Claire and I arrived in Somerset on Sunday night, made dinner, and talked about our plans. We'd decided to introduce one another to a poet who was important to us; we'd write from first thing in the morning till lunch, then get out for a while, then come back for dinner and to work; we'd comment on one another's poems; we'd read some of the books we'd been wanting to read; we'd get started on some reviews. 

And we've had three heat-ridden, exhausting, vegetarian (with the understanding that I'm not--yet--vegetarian), exciting, tremendous days.

We both came with different goals. I wanted to settle into work on my second book, Divining for Starters; Claire had many poems she wanted to revise; we both had reviews we hoped to start and finish for TLS. Because of mutual determination and reinforcement, we've both been successful. I read and took notes on Jennifer Moxley's Imagination Verses and reread Linda Gregg's Too Bright to See and have begun reading--and loving--Luke Kennard's latest, The Migraine Hotel; I drafted three poems on the first day, two poems each day since, pushing myself to experiment with form and style; and I'm well into my review for TLS, which I expect to finish by week's end. But the least measurable element has been the best--a steady stream of conversation about poetry, romantic relationships, family, and more poetry. I've never had a better friend.

Jennifer Moxley's Imagination Verses (Tender Buttons, 1996; Salt, 2003)

I could have grown tall,

but I awoke to no words and wonder left.

"Home World"

...equal measures

of air and earth

came to me

precious enough,

I wore them

well knowing

my thoughts

would think me

hollow, exiled

to the abandoning

company

of all

my illusory 

ends.

last lines of "Ode on the End"

(double spaced in the original)

down that rabbit hole my liege

I'm a camera gathering brightness

"Bi-coastal Fleshings"

Were we the land's

before we were landed?

"The Winged Words"

Where is my field of wheat,

my flock, my ocean,

my arsenal, my knight errant.

"Ode on the Son"

I dreamt

a petal's depth of hatred

            hovered at my ear

while vagaries worked

            to rough me up.

*

                  A girl,

I have seen tragedy

      consider being

such as we are.

"Ten Still Petals"

and know again

there's a place for us, and such

a country.

end of "Underlying Assumptions"

(double spaced in the original)

Come along, you can join us 

if you lose that proclivity 

for worship--any medium size

planet will do. Just think,

four walls and a microwave

could really keep us busy.

end of "Studio Life"

(doubled spaced in the original)

I grow phallic

with each dissemination

"The Removal of Enlightenment Safeguards"

It's as if to be real

you and I must garner backers

without a rib to call our own.

We make ripples

with daily effort and then suddenly

flood the place with anger.

opening lines of "Ode to Protest"

(double spaced in the original)

enough

ignorance

to fell unclouded truth, truth

like a tunnel to the heart

            fluttering

*

punished dreamer

failed redeemer

man, or country

"The Ballad of Her rePossession"

(double spaced in the original)

...in the frozen field of aim, beside the gift of all intention

            perhaps I'll cry away the day

            perhaps I'll choose a different wreck

perhaps I'll live this appalling destiny

                  in the economy of night.

the end of "Wake"

(double spaced in the original)

I suspect the water's edge is enamored of the water,

a quiver on the surface tells me not the wind

but the wish to drift will devastate the sand.

It is the future's focal infection, this insistence on death, 

like when my mother and father cradled me

as the answer to each other's desperate tread towards union.

For this is a universe where things are not apparent

in their cruelty, but continual, and the sweetness of order

is increasingly evanescent. If I could hide this day forever

from the pleasure of renewal and banish all contingency

from happening I would, but I have never seen planet X

or the wooden ships on the Eastern horizon.

Up until now my life has faced West, sequestered

reason reaching for an injudicious kiss.

second and final stanza of

"The Waver in the Orbit of Uranus Becomes Unexplainable"

...we have built what we imagine

others building. Behind other

summer-lit windows 

there must be wall paper

worth waking up to....

*

                                    It was

the year the phones went dead

on Mother's Day, though most mothers

preferred fully realized human potential

to letters home or regular calls.

"Lucky So and So"

"Survivorman" by Sherman Alexie

Online at The New Yorker.

Claire Crowther's The Clockwork Gift

A sample poem--

Petra Genetrix

I won't replace lost wedding cutlery,

its broad straight limbs,

with new shallow spoons,

their writhing shoulderless handles--

Lines get broken.

All I see in museums

is the frozen watchfulness of a previous home.

Ancient knives found under Eden Walk are flints

polished in an age defined by how it ate.

There's no matching greenstone and dolomite

though I could still buy old patterns,

shell, feather, rat tail.

'Granny, did you throw away your silver?'

'The table of the moon is laid with it.'

Claire Crowther

The Clockwork Gift (Shearsman, 2009)

It can be purchased directly from Shearsman Books or from The Book Depository.