Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Saving
- Out of this World
- Observatory
- Zentralfriedhof
- How to Remember
- Europe
- What's Gone Blue
- Plain Tongues
- As the Crow Flies the Sun Rips Day Open
- Boy
- The Roof
- Eva Braun in Linz
- Yellow
- My Girl in California
- St Peter
- The Soldiers
- Palace
- Outside Vienna
- Neutral Air
- Woman
- How to Forget
- The Sound
- In Time
- The Lever
- Fourteen Mistakes
- The Fall
- The Hold I Have
- Centre Strange
- Born Breathing
- The Heads
- Home
- Epilogue
- Maker
- Acknowledgements
Maker
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Saving
- Out of this World
- Observatory
- Zentralfriedhof
- How to Remember
- Europe
- What's Gone Blue
- Plain Tongues
- As the Crow Flies the Sun Rips Day Open
- Boy
- The Roof
- Eva Braun in Linz
- Yellow
- My Girl in California
- St Peter
- The Soldiers
- Palace
- Outside Vienna
- Neutral Air
- Woman
- How to Forget
- The Sound
- In Time
- The Lever
- Fourteen Mistakes
- The Fall
- The Hold I Have
- Centre Strange
- Born Breathing
- The Heads
- Home
- Epilogue
- Maker
- Acknowledgements
Summary
Home's far and grown old. A friend gives
birth in three hours in a snowstorm
on the floor of a flat in Camberwell.
Poppy Wotherspoon, born in snow.
I walk with a pen and futures I tried to have
and couldn't. Not to want a child but to not
later want to've wanted.
Keep it simple so: Went out walking in Berlin
with wet hair, and realized through a year all grief ‘d
dried. And winter burst in.
Sing then the might haves. Sing the death not sought.
Sing so much seeking. Interrupting – after some months
enter a new character – and why this one, why him?
Because a particularly snowed-in winter, because
a friend's disappointment, because two young peacocks pecking
at a rubbish dump?
Because, the child says, confidently. Be cause.
Of course. East.
Of course, then, myself, with gloves left at home,
knuckles bloodless and greed eyed.
Know fragility's needed, is what makes us whole.
I missed this lightness. Who had it when I didn't?
A fire hydrant's red's
the exact brightness. At Tempelhofer Feld,
black dogs beside crows. In my old life we made a lot
and it took so much to pull apart; makeshift gardens
grown and changed, bare twigs stuck up like
hair, and now even in winter couples perch
on the edge of wooden boxes, calling out hallo
and smiling at strangers. My fingers form warmth slowly
out of coatpockets. Again I see
that rogue loveliness in dirt. Let's put our feet down
flat, chart patterns in soil. Let's take pen,
work ink. Think a female Buck Mulligan,
think a cold charlatan, think a warm-nighted man.
Think I'll make makers before meeting mine.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Nowhere Nearer , pp. 49 - 50Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018