Written by
Edward Field |
He didn't die in the whirlpool by the mill
where he had fallen in after a wild chase
by all the people of the town.
Somehow he clung to an overhanging rock
until the villagers went away.
And when he came out, he was changed forever,
that soft heart of his had hardened
and he really was a monster now.
He was out to pay them back,
to throw the lie of brotherly love
in their white Christian teeth.
Wasn't his flesh human flesh
even made from the bodies of criminals,
the worst the Baron could find?
But love is not necessarily implicit in human flesh:
Their hatred was now his hatred,
so he set out on his new career
his previous one being the victim,
the good man who suffers.
Now no longer the hunted but the hunter
he was in charge of his destiny
and knew how to be cold and clever,
preserving barely a spark of memory
for the old blind musician
who once took him in and offered brotherhood.
His idea -- if his career now had an idea --
was to kill them all,
keep them in terror anyway,
let them feel hunted.
Then perhaps they would look at others
with a little pity and love.
Only a suffering people have any virtue.
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Written by
Kathleen Raine |
If you go deep
Into the heart
What do you find there?
Fear, fear,
Fear of the jaws of the rock,
Fear of the teeth and splinters of iron that tear
Flesh from the bone, and the moist
Blood, running unfelt
From the wound, and the hand
Suddenly moist and red.
If you go deep
Into the heart
What do you find?
Grief, grief,
Grief for the life unlived,
For the loves unloved,
For the child never to be born,
Th'unbidden anguish, when the fair moon
Rises over still summer seas, and the pain
Of sunlight scattered in vain on spring grass.
If you go deeper
Into the heart
What do you find there?
Death, death,
Death tht lets all go by,
Lets the blood flow from the wound,
Lets the night pass,
Endures the day with indifference, knowing that all must end.
Sorrow is not forever, ad sense
Endures no extremities,
Death is the last Secret implicit within you, the hidden, the deepest
Knowledge of all you will ever unfold
In this body of earth.
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Written by
John Burnside |
I dream of the silence
the day before Adam came
to name the animals,
The gold skins newly dropped
from God's bright fingers, still
implicit with the light.
A day like this, perhaps:
a winter whiteness
haunting the creation,
as we are sometimes
haunted by the space
we fill, or by the forms
we might have known
before the names,
beyond the gloss of things.
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