20. Afterwards graft line from “Deserted Nest Box” David Morley, in The Gypsy and the Poet (Carcanet Press, 2013) death is not the end. the world continues, causal chains and reasoned actions don't all cease, the cosmos doesn't disappear. but those who mourn are constantly reminded of things' endings: skeletons of fallen trees lie beside, skulls of leaf litter, hairless, skinless, fleshless; new-grave molehills, lichened rocks with shifting shadows, almost words of loss; the grey remains of fires, powdery, caught by a gust of wind to rise, swirl, fall.
21. Regret graft line from “Chorus of Furies” Basil Bunting, in Redimiculum Matellarum (privately printed, Milan, 1930) the light was too thin, diluted by the darkness. the hedgerow stretched out dim, obscured by rising ink. the punctuating trees were unheard exclamation marks. the faint dusk chorus hung, damp washing on the mist-filled air. the fading sun picked out the last skin of the flayed: despair. a definite yet indistinct miasma hung around the country lane, the fitful breeze unable to dispel the charnel stink.
22. Acceptance graft line from “The Apple Trees” Louise Glück, in The House on Marshland (Ecco Press, 1975) there is no racism among the dead — all skeletons are white, all flesh is red. their grief was indiscriminate; hot tears were shed for all whose hard remains were scattered there. but finally their eyes were clear. they sat upon the blood-stained ground and counted out the whittled ribs, the scrimshawed scapulæ, the skulls from which all hope had fled. they traced the injuries, disease, and diet — wear on teeth disclosed the grains from which they baked their bread, the bones told complex tales of childhood meals, of hunting, gathering, of times of plenty, times of dread.
23. Skidoo graft line from “But What Is the Reader to Make of All This?” John Ashbery, in A Wave (Carcanet Press, 1984) after all this time, this striving for a voice, he finds one, hones it, sharpens it to a precise distinctness... then finds one that is near identical for sale at four pounds ninety-five. mild disappointment, surely, little more — and yet he dives into a lake of pain, an absence of proportion drowning him. his lungs fill with silence.
Nos 20-23 from "Hard Graft on the Half Shell", a sequence of poems grown around one-line grafts taken from other poets' poems.
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