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Posts Tagged ‘composition’

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THE ART OF POETRY

It is myself tumbling over words
God’s engine roaring a gobby throb
Through heart and nerves and up
To drowning tongue and out free
Into virtual sullen air.
Once solid rooted sense now willowherb whisp
And whatever-you-will, blown breezy and rain wetted.
A garden of weed unruly in bitter pale sunset.
More holy are the turning worms
Silent in their utter diligence to earth.
More holy the first few crisped furls of ash
Let go falling to ground melting for future loveliness.
Myrddin out of mind again and railing.
Everywhere the road turns are madmen
And reckless thieves.
Prophets tearing clothes wander footless into fields
And weeping eat the grasses there
For they can do little else.
Then later, carefully in glowing cursive,
Copy out their rantings for a future offspring.
Little despair misinterpreted once again,
An art of poetry, penultimate.

I have been attempting to get a poem together for the local Llanwrtyd Eisteddfod, but I really do not like working to given subject matter. I have, over the course of the last few weeks created bundles of words that are strewn around the subject matter, but none, (or maybe just one), carries the spontaneity and flow of energy I would like. After reading and making slight adjustments to what may be the best of the bunch, this tumbled out by itself ( as it were). I will likely post the Eisteddfod submission later in the month, and maybe a few fragments of the rejected pieces around the same matter before that….or maybe forget the whole thing for a bit.

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Hesitancy on the road.
Many paths, choose one and run, or
choose none, still taking one,
’til it bursts to flow,
making itself, self-born,
isolated in shattering glory.
Language rivers, language
rattles, a trance of noise.
Teased by meaning (there or not).
A sequence,
simply a sequence of breaths,
dressed in rhythms of night and day.
Stripped back to the bone,
it is all only, ever was,
ever will be,
song (toes dangling
over the cool void, home of dear silence).
Emergence, enfoldment.
A certain expansion,
a sure rotation,
a welcoming collapse.

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SOUL’S MUSIC

This, then, is the music.
My head: a rippling stream,
A passing breeze,
A rustle, a lifting
And a falling.

Notes that cascade and tumble
But hold still.
New green leaves, new shade;
Harmonic tides,
Distant waves pierced:
The gull’s wheeling turn;
A slow stuttering starlight;
A bloom of sun, a drift of moon.

Fingers rippling on water strings
A remembrance, an essence, a perfume,
A rise of incense.
The turning of a page,
The sound of honest paper.
A rhythm of gardening,
A stroke of brushes,
A slow file turning soft, bright silver,
An edge revealed.

Trembling cascade,
Inevitable shift
From melancholic
To elegaic,
A broken heart soothed
Somehow
( but never mended).
The smell of rain.
The smell of summer.

A sequence moving along time,
Planned but reckless,
A bed, a couch, a cradle.
Always building to this matchlessness:
The revolving, wheeling heavens.
A path between dawn and dusk,
A road paved amongst the stars.

It is neither the truth
Nor the lie of words,
Neither the insistence
Nor the revealing of maps.
It is weaving the name of a soul,
A secret name known by all.
This music, a familiar mystery,
An itch, a longing, a homecoming
Just beyond that green hill.
Just beyond that hill.

***

There is that sort of dream wherein one listens to, or manages to play, the very essence of oneself, the most perfect delightful complete sounds, the most exquisite melody. Probably a compilation of the oldest, forgotten echoes from childhood, the phrases and rhythms that themselves formed the brain’s shape, how it moves within itself. Always fascinating, the way a composer or musician can be recognised by a phrasing, a pattern of intervals, a sequence of chords. As if they always return to those notes that name the shape of their own soul.

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