after George Oppen
But—
of all things
matter is the most penetrable.
In the freezing light:
the echoes of the bulbs, pinkly heating.
I'm awaiting nothing.
Recurrence:
what the new keeps
under its stylish coat.
Dean Blunt on again. Life Without Buildings.
Always this
soundtrack to time wasted.
I mistake snow for memory.
Outside, the drifts pile slowly.
Laptops in clean rooms
with sterile couches.
All night cold beams hum the names of power.
Born late, for us
there is no red house
in the little woods.
Still, for hours
we sit rooted to the common dream.
Obviously we do not matter, and yet
the universe
has led precisely
to this point.
Don't try to feel too much.
There’s this coracle falling way
a feather has—
unverifiable—
in the still air.
There are the brief maps
the birds draw.
Noon.
The light lets the shadows go
for a time.
The event as ordinary
stops us
everywhere
from wonder.
The picture robs the thing of ruin.
Through the estate,
the bright and bricked up doors,
a few rubbish bags
next to birches.
The final resting place for bedclothes.
The seaside vending machine
dispenses fossils
and the mulberry tree drips red
in the child’s mind.
Privately, the commonplace persists
only
to be cherished.
Crows against winter sky.
Lamps mithering
through poly-tunnels and gloomy motorway.
On the old hill the crag glows,
the dark blue evening
shows now
our fallacies of talking, of keeping hold.
A black rim widens.
Dark leaves and the dark kerbs.
A spider manoeuvres under the skylight,
an audible sound
on its layered web.
Noumena
in the meeting place
of puddle and leaf—
Years of ocean
lick smooth only a small pebble.
Oh,
it is, isn’t it,
it’s coming apart.
