Alice Oswald > Quotes

“May two fields be bridged by a stile
And two hearts by the tilting footbridge of a glance”
― Alice Oswald, Woods etc.

“Various stars. Various kings.
Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights.
Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers,
Much cold, much overbearing darkness.

Various long midwinter Glooms.
Various Solitary and Terrible Stars.
Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers.
Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars.

...

Various people coming home (some of them kings). Various headlights.
Two or three children standing or sitting on the low wall.
Various winds, the Sea Wind, the sound-laden Winds of Evening
Blowing the stars toward them, bringing snow.”
― Alice Oswald, Woods etc.

“The first whisper of stars is a faint thing
a candle sound, too far away to read by...”
― Alice Oswald, Woods etc.

“What I love is one foot in front of another. South-south-west and down the contours. I go slipping between Black Ridge and White Horse Hill into a bowl of the moor where echoes can't get out

listen

a

lark

spinning

around

one

note

splitting

and

mending

it

and I find you in the reeds, a trickle coming out of a bark, a foal of a river”
― Alice Oswald, Dart

“A Short Story of Falling

It is the story of the falling rain
to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower
to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary
that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water's wishes and this tale
hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail

if only I a passerby could pass
as clear as water through a plume of grass

to find the sunlight hidden at the tip
turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip

then I might know like water how to balance
the weight of hope against the light of patience

water which is so raw so earthy-strong
and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along

drawn under gravity towards my tongue
to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song

which is the story of the falling rain
that rises to the light and falls again”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“There floats above the houses
The implacable goddess of love
With your life in her fist.”
― Alice Oswald, A Sleepwalk on the Severn

“And HECTOR died like everyone else
He was in charge of the Trojans
But a spear found out the little patch of white
Between his collarbone and his throat
Just exactly where a man's soul sits
Waiting for the mouth to open
He always knew it would happen
He who was so boastful and anxious
And used to nip home deafened by weapons
To stand in full armour in the doorway
Like a man rushing in leaving his motorbike running
All women loved him
His wife was Andromache
One day he looked at her quietly
He said I know what will happen
And an image stared at him of himself dead
And her in Argos weaving for some foreign woman
He blinked and went back to his work
Hector loved Andromache
But in the end he let her face slide from his mind
He came back to her sightless
Strengthless expressionless
Asking only to be washed and burned
And his bones wrapped in soft cloths
And returned to the ground”
― Alice Oswald, Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad

“still in her white night
clothes in the same long entangle-
ment”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“or if I stand
if I move one hand
I hear the hiss of flowers closing their eyelids”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“A RUSHED ACCOUNT OF THE DEW

I who can blink
to break the spell of daylight

and what a sliding screen between worlds
is a blink

I who can hear the last three seconds in my head
but the present is beyond me
listen

in this tiny moment of reflexion
I want to work out what it's like to descend
out of the dawn's mind

and find a leaf and fasten the known to the unknown
with a liquid cufflink
and then unfasten

to be brief

to be almost actual

oh pristine example
of claiming a place on the earth
only to cancel”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“remembering better times whereas naming no names
some of us would rather not remember something
some of us have got enough bloody nightmares already”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“little distant sounds of shut-away singing”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“the makeshift character that
springs from speaking and looking
on and letting everything pass and
then the loneliness of being left here
endless lost to my lethargy like a
dripping tap”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“almost everything here has cold hands”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“little whispering fidgeting of a shut-away congregation
wondering who to pray to”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“YOU MUST NEVER SLEEP UNDER A MAGNOLIA

when the tree begins to flower
like a glimpse of

Flesh

when the flower begins to smell
as if its roots have reached

the layer of
Thirst upon the
unsealed jar of

Joy

Alice, you should
never sleep under
so much pure pale

so many shriek-mouthed blooms

as if Patience
had run out of

Patience”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“no more than a flash of free-will
until the clouds close their options and the whole

melancholy air
surrenders to pure fear and
falls”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“not many of us left not much movement
in the blackening lanes among a few low trees
little flocks of orchids in the ditches nobody cares”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“very nearly anonymous now
having recently turned five thousand
with the same wedge of yearning
lodged in my chest as ever
and getting accustomed to
surviving like a bramble very good
at growing anywhere you ought to
praise me for this trailing bloom”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“what a block of hope what a
kleptomaniac what a thief of life

I am”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“they say the herons used to hang
like lamps here giving off gloom”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“it is always midnight in those pools”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“beautiful disused route to the sea
fish path with nearly no fish in”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“not yet continuous
no more than a shiver of something”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“and working with the same bewitched slightly off-hand look
as the sea”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“as if dropped from a great height

falling”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“and what precisely is this shining”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“I thought I heard myself
being looked for what is it I said
what is it madam that you wish to
imply”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“they lift their faces to the past”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“she never quite completes her
sentence but is always almost”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake