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“I Leave This at Your Ear For When You Wake"
I leave this at your ear for when you wake,
A creature in its abstract cage asleep.
Your dreams blindfold you by the light they make.
The owl called from the naked-woman tree
As I came down by the Kyle farm to hear
Your house silent by the speaking sea.
I have come late but I have come before
Later with slaked steps from stone to stone
To hope to find you listening for the door.
I stand in the ticking room. My dear, I take
A moth kiss from your breath. The shore gulls cry.
I leave this at your ear for when you wake.”
―
I leave this at your ear for when you wake,
A creature in its abstract cage asleep.
Your dreams blindfold you by the light they make.
The owl called from the naked-woman tree
As I came down by the Kyle farm to hear
Your house silent by the speaking sea.
I have come late but I have come before
Later with slaked steps from stone to stone
To hope to find you listening for the door.
I stand in the ticking room. My dear, I take
A moth kiss from your breath. The shore gulls cry.
I leave this at your ear for when you wake.”
―
“Listen. Put on morning. Waken into falling light.”
―
―
“The Constructed Space"
Meanwhile surely there must be something to say,
Maybe not suitable but at least happy
In a sense between us two whoever
We are. Anyhow here we are and never
Before have we two faced each other who face
Each other now across this abstract scene
Stretching between us. This is a public place
Achieved against subjective odds and then
Mainly an obstacle to what I mean.
It is like that, remember. It is like that
Very often at the beginning till we are met
By some intention risen up out of nothing.
And even then we know what we are saying
Only when it is said and fixed and dead.
Or maybe, surely, of course we never know
What we have said, what lonely meanings are read
Into the space we make. And yet I say
This silence here for in it I might hear you.
I say this silence or, better, construct this space
So that somehow something may move across
The caught habits of language to you and me.
From where we are it is not us we see
And times are hastening yet, disguise is mortal.
The times continually disclose our home.
Here in the present tense disguise is mortal.
The trying times are hastening. Yet here I am
More truly now this abstract act become.”
― New Collected Poems
Meanwhile surely there must be something to say,
Maybe not suitable but at least happy
In a sense between us two whoever
We are. Anyhow here we are and never
Before have we two faced each other who face
Each other now across this abstract scene
Stretching between us. This is a public place
Achieved against subjective odds and then
Mainly an obstacle to what I mean.
It is like that, remember. It is like that
Very often at the beginning till we are met
By some intention risen up out of nothing.
And even then we know what we are saying
Only when it is said and fixed and dead.
Or maybe, surely, of course we never know
What we have said, what lonely meanings are read
Into the space we make. And yet I say
This silence here for in it I might hear you.
I say this silence or, better, construct this space
So that somehow something may move across
The caught habits of language to you and me.
From where we are it is not us we see
And times are hastening yet, disguise is mortal.
The times continually disclose our home.
Here in the present tense disguise is mortal.
The trying times are hastening. Yet here I am
More truly now this abstract act become.”
― New Collected Poems
“Over my death, Christ weeps not a moment.”
―
―
“Listen.
Put on morning.
Waken into falling light.”
―
Put on morning.
Waken into falling light.”
―
“I stop and listen over my shoulder and listen back on language for that step that seems to fall after my own step in the dark.”
― New Selected Poems of W.S. Graham
― New Selected Poems of W.S. Graham
“Have I not been trying to use the obstacle of language well?”
― New Selected Poems of W.S. Graham
― New Selected Poems of W.S. Graham
“It is a kind of triumph to see them and to put them down as what they are. The inadequacy of the living, animal language drives us all to metaphor and an attempt to organize the spaces we think we have made occur between the words.”
― New Selected Poems of W.S. Graham
― New Selected Poems of W.S. Graham
“I call the ocean my faith. I write my breath
On bright unpublishable minds where pentacles
Singe the winged flamen's pelt and branded loin
And jerk an earring's carol as he milks the stars.”
― New Collected Poems
On bright unpublishable minds where pentacles
Singe the winged flamen's pelt and branded loin
And jerk an earring's carol as he milks the stars.”
― New Collected Poems
“The poet or painter steers his life to maim
Himself somehow for the job. His job is Love
Imagined into words or paint to make
an object that will stand and will not move.
-The Thermal Stair”
― New Collected Poems
Himself somehow for the job. His job is Love
Imagined into words or paint to make
an object that will stand and will not move.
-The Thermal Stair”
― New Collected Poems
