John Welch's pamphlet, Untold Wealth (Oystercatcher, 2008)

As I can't make it to London tomorrow to hear John Welch read, I decided I'd catch up with my Oystercatcher collection and read his pamphlet tonight. Here are some choice passages:

a barrenness of waiting buds

*

The difficult it is

Here, the original place?

*

Londonistan this

Othered I's

Home earth

To die in the land

'laid to rest'

But turn away here

How shallow are

The roots of understanding

As if powdered with their names

Gutterals I strove to utter

Ripening like a bed of fruit

I don't defend the process

Ashes that float across

This soft-voiced alien narrative

Dying in history's echo

Here they are in the post office

As if queuing at the end of empire

*

Arrival, as if you are

worshipping thresholds

As if signing, the

dust with our names

*

Being all potential is

A gathering-point of forces

*

I mean

The man's impossible dignity

Cornered in exile

Is what fails to disappear

The weaver of uncorrupted cloth

*

swan family their

bliss of extended necks

*

As if self were a city and we are all other

Just to be like that in the air

Abrupt as a bird's life and it is enough.

from "home ground"

Here flights of capital pigeons

They're turning turning on a depthless sky

*

I who went out walking

As if I had scarcely begun

from "untold wealth"

The pamphlet is available direct from the publisher. His recent books are published by Shearsman.