I look at blackbirds thirteen more ways
after wallace stevens
I.
a tied knot , a black coruscation ;
II.
what appears , and now fades , in the agitated
snow-bound soil ;
III.
as contact and re-contact and lifting
away into hard blue eggshell blue as
blue after biting ;
IV.
eyes , a dead rabbit's eyes in a butcher's
shop window ;
V.
two sudden emanations – the woman looks up from her phone , and tatwig street is on fire
its violence immaculate
VI.
without inflection , the dutiful sudden
candour of rainfall ;
VII.
smouldering snow-bound driveways , if considering blackbird we are far
without patience ;
VIII.
forgetting , punching an
incorrect number ;
IX.
the aeration of beats of her wings
on a window
X.
five or seventeen or twelve swooping black bodies
XI.
sunlight is faded, articulate flutter ;
XII.
its instruments fade like a portion of night ;
XIII.
my phone screen blurs at the scent of his body – my phone screen blurs at the scent of his arms
NIGHT AUTO
I.
I kept my hands on the dashboard. I kept my hands
down as the snow made the journey
blind and buried our treads in the night's butter
coloured tailback to a city
filled with art galleries and funeral homes
and funeral homes
which hung paintings on their walls
of tuscan landscapes and spanish
pavilions . the coffins of our mothers weighed nothing
or weighed too much! the pale water
colours make death seem like a holiday, like
something you can return from.
II.
in the time it took to sing, my hexameter
broke like a biscuit or a vase. Its sound was in my clothes, a singing
sheaf of grass ; a grown-ass man held my language down, putting
his fingers in his mouth at a raised restaurant table. is this what it
takes for an arm to hold the weight
of an entire generation? Is this
how you spread a sticky pink web
and dragged it through
my rooms? in my closed car
I like to think about things I've forgotten,
or guess those I'm about to forget.
III.
now i've had time , it seems
he was teaching me, in his own way, how to box, or how
to string words along like a pike in the channel ,
gauging its keenness for death with how hard
it pulls on the chord , or how limply
it writhes in the bucket , flashing
like a pocket of change ; it flashed
in the sun! i pulled my knife out.
I made all the things I rely on
gold, and turned them around on my driveway
and drove them over into gold dust
and spread this on my soil.
IV.
yeah - the mind can echo for a good long
while after you say her name - 'p' ,
yes - the mind is a fine tuned
instrument capable of returning to its
roots from tasting how the air
works , and seeing the work
of your forebears in the careful
golden fretwork of the gentle white building
which sits on that humber lawn like a beetle's
broach in the sun and she keeps on coming and
going in her bright
yellow dress – yes her name can
echo for a good long time . yes i keep
to my ear the ground – yes i'll keep my mouth
to the night.
After Francis Bacon's 'Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion', 1944
I.
the air is a sexual organ – it carries disease , dishevels
with its fluke the dry grass around gethsemane where
now there is a fuel station, a triad of white flats , washing
pitched into the sun ; the shoulder blade is too a fluke ,
my bent red intestine – purposing is why I remain, gathered
into segmentations , or else prized out from march , its
worrisome air ; I will wait until my name is called, gently .
This is the certitude I have.
II.
rainbow bird spotting – do you admire the curve of her wing,
its drooling mouth , its horrendous eyes ? in pyrimidines
I call out to my father , say , what is this body in the air, dropping
like a knife into the world's skin ? he answers, but neither is
this more clear . the world shudders , as if space has thrown back
one of its own, and he was a tide which sung , and startled
the hemisphere . red black , red black , red black .
III.
a mouth open as far as a mouth can open ; surely this is night ,
the clock tower of its furthest point, like a scratch made intolerable
on the dutiful skin . brushwork is a container, but you get
a certain love from sweeping the tiles, your black coat, the dog's
hair, the sky's throat . you have to press your ear up very close
to hear the scream that caves make, that any gap or breach
in the world makes – just because it's open – just because you need to .
thirty one
I love the city ; its pulverising grey of upturned tree
roots, its metastasising genres of blank plastic , its plants
like obsidian or fragile glass wafers . I gently reveal myself to
its
calamity – I gently stand in the brick arches beneath holloway
my hand clasping a bland pool , an accidental
fallen flower , deciding how to comport myself , how to wear
black outside of funerals .
( the white sea-baltic canal poem )
[ a ]
an empty curse ; with soiled white
hands held – in prison's
river , forgotten to everything ; even
our anticipate mothers , their remembrance
on the first morning when our sentry
called into the blankness , said the blind fields
were a bounty
to the knowing – such a man mistook the clouds themselves
for bewitched upside-down boats , their pale oars
stroking the nether sea
like cigarette smoke – the wind a smoker's breath ,
our hardness -
[ b ]
you want to believe good news , or
kill it
very early , before
it sprouts leaves or disperses seed
in the minds of a population who have abandoned
wellness -
[ c ]
a bird wheels
above the mud pack
river -
I bend my head to see it ;
my neck cranes
sideways -
[ d ]
sorrento leans into the sea -
the peach white sun leans into the sea -
your cough stifles the sea -
your dead friend , gumilev , is a name in bronze -
they shot him in october , or at the end of september
; sorrento is a wilted forest -
; her squares are sun touched , unlike
the catacombs of lyubyanka, the farmyard smell
that death has
[ e ]
the stairs of povenets
ascend to death , to subtle waters
in the land's mouth -
they do not deter me . i am so, so patient.
will I see you there?
Owen Vince is a poet who writes about architecture and video games. Poetry editor for HARK, he also runs PYRAMID Editions poetry press and tweets @abrightfar.
