RAIN AS SPIRIT
Rain becomes spirit. Spray
christens the damp. The service
continues all day
with its own dull music
until you are converted
to its buttoned faith.
Dear English winter,
constant visitor, lie down,
make yourself at home
among these soaked heads.
THE LAST PEACE
When the last peace was
pronounced there could be no more
war only silence
and a standing still
that should last for ever now.
How good not to move
or even to think
of moving. How good to stay
perfectly still. Peace
was surely coming.
THE FUTURE OF THE FUTURE
Talking for ever
is a nightmare he wakes from
even while speaking.
He hears himself launch
into a peroration
on earwigs and fleas
and the lost future
of silence. He has heard it
all before. There is
no future in it.
NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Sometimes things move so
fast they seem to have arrived
before they were launched.
My father, loathing
early computers, preferred
counting in his head.
His head was crowded
with numbers. He had worn them
in terrible times
and rarely lost count.
CELEBRATING LK
In this translation
you will look in vain for a
full-stop, Stops are there,
but hard to find. Keep
searching. Oh look, there is one!
He must have taken
breath. Time can stand still
for the blink of a whale's eye.
Then the whale goes down,
spouting as it dives.
AUTUMNAL
Now the rains have come
and days cool and shorten, time
curls around itself
like a soaked cat. But
now and then the sun will out
to ease the path down.
Autumn is our time.
All that late fruit - pears, apples -
and dead leaves piling
in rust-red gutters.
A 25 minute film based on interviews with me in England and in Hungary on the occasion of being awarded the King's Gold Medal for Poetry. The film is in English with Hungarian subtitles
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbNz...
SOMEWHERE IN LANGUAGE
Somewhere in language
there is space for the world. See!
Stand there and watch it
appear then vanish.
In script, in the yawning gap
between parts of speech,
there is a house, night,
dogs, vicissitudes, murder,
delight, the absurd
or that’s what we say.
Spring waits on summer
Spring waits on summer
like an enthusiastic
bride properly dressed
for the occasion.
Hawthorn, apple blossom, whites
bobbing in the wind
in mild excitement.
Weddings are in season now.
Surely something good
is in the offing.
You turn off the light
and sense the room rearrange
itself around you
like a different space
where you yourself are different.
So simple to leave
a world. So simple
to stand still. Now you are here,
now gone. Turn it off
and walk, keep walking.
THE DOOR
After a warm day
the coolness of evening shocks
the skin. It pleases
and revives something
that must have been felt after birth
when the world entered
through a sudden door
and announced itself. How cold
everything can be,
it says. How alive.
THE LOST
When they arrive, they
listen to their own breathing
with rapt attention.
Long trees lean in. Light
hangs on the wall. Birds repeat
their usual calls. Life
attends on such things.
To be lost requires intense
concentration. Night
will wait on their dreams.
Night in Budapest
in a quiet district past
midnight. The sleepless
turn in silent beds,
listening to their own thoughts,
neighbours in courtyards
locked on to their lives.
Where would night be without them?
Where are the bright moons
of their faint breathing?
Now it is quiet.
Friday night streets are silent
and the pubs have closed.
You would not believe
alternatives existed
except in nightmares
lurking round corners
of the imagination.
The windows are closed
against the frail wind.
The night is frozen
in its long moment. The stars
are frozen to night.
Sooner or later
morning will come to melt stars
into pools of light
and clocks into time.
There will be voices speaking
of the loneliness
of clocks and cold stars.
FIRST DAY OF SPRING
The first day of spring
spreads its palms to receive light
and buds and first growths.
How keen the world is
to expand into itself,
to full ripe blossom
and mild temperatures.
Demons of frozen nights have
nowhere to go but
there where it's coldest.
There used to be a country called America.
Our February books are out today! New poetry books by Belgium's Charlotte Van den Broeck, Romania's Ana Blandiana, & Hungary's Krisztina Tóth (trs @georgeszirtes.bsky.social).
Our online launch event featured readings and discussion from the poets & their translators.
youtube.com/live/SiYFLYP...
After the rain
After the rain stopped
they stepped out into fresh air.
Air was what they breathed,
sharp as blades of grass,
multicoloured like the day.
Always there’s something
to hope for and this
was as good as it would get
as if the earth could
spin faster, spin free.
Hello, Paul.
Evenings, Midnights
Those empty evenings
when time sits on its bare hands
and closes its mouth.
Those evenings waiting
for a midnight that never
arrives. Those evenings
when world holds its breath
hoping history turns up
with gifts of kindness
so long overdue.
Across the two books, a wide range of forms are on show: sonnets, prose poems, abecedarian, villanelle, ekphrastic meditations. The #poets discuss how form and subject interplay. George Szirtes (@georgeszirtes.bsky.social) is particularly interesting on how a challenging form can unlock new meanings
VAMPIRE CHOIR
I’ve joined the Vampire Choir
We only meet at night
We constantly aspire
To make our music bright
We do have such fun making it
Till someone puts a stake in it.
GHOST TOAST
I prefer Ghost Toast
It doesn’t make you fat
One calorie at most,
Transparent and quite flat
And when you come to chew it
There’s nothing to it.
GHOUL IN A POOL
There’s a ghoul in the pool.
I know him from school.
He has work to prepare
So he shouldn’t be there
But he’s wild and unruly,
Naughty wee ghoulie.
From the book published by The Paekakariki Press in 2018, 67pp, I'm posting this to see if it is legible. These tales were composed of series of Tweets.
Night Fields
A few late cars cruise
the Sunday street. A small town
dreams cars and a moon
that has to be dreamt
into being. It lies down
on its back, Venus
above it, waiting
for something like a taxi
to ferry it home
across the night fields.
Yes, it's my book launch tomorrow 🤩🤩🤩 Totally free, but you do need to register. They'll be lots of amazing poets there @georgeszirtes.bsky.social @judithnangala.bsky.social Judith Beveridge, Anthony Lawrence, Jaya Savige, Sara Sarah, Mark Tredinnick, Audrey Molloy, and hiding in a corner, me 😅