As it slowly awakens
“Give me in its parcel of hours
a slippery, silken forgettable day.”
. (Moniza Alvi)
You stiffen. Then you sigh. Nothing’s moving now,
not for the longest time. It is so quiet that I almost
hear your blood slow down and settle to a quiet humming.
The low, crazed buzzing of a bluebottle
reminds me of the old and rumbling iron beasts:
Those half-forgotten, sweaty mornings
of early tank manoeuvres, two or three
abandoned fields from where we stayed,
in my grandfather’s summer cottage,
where the flies that didn’t end up caught
in the gentle movements of the lacy curtains or
stuck to sweaty, slowly spinning, serpentine ribbons,
sometimes, in the morning, walked the skin of oranges
(stacked in the cracked, fake Grecian bowl on the breakfast table)
like lazy astronauts, out for a stroll on an alien but kindly planet.
I watch your hand now, as it slowly awakens
to send off a pompously fat, priestly black fly
that had been feasting on our cooling sweat.
January 16th, 2011 at 2:37 am
I don’t think I’ve ever read anything so… perfect.
January 16th, 2011 at 3:22 am
Thank you – truly but you do need to read more. I’m no good doing humble but you do need to go out more.
Try Jane Hirhsfield, for instance, or Lorca, or Neruda, or so many others, truly. (Eliot, with the Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock).
Anyway, it’s hard to tell if any reaction to a post is by a real person or by some spam bot. I’d like to think you are a person who liked the poem. If so, I’d like to talk a bit more.
If you are real and liked the poem: Thank you, truly,
Jan.