Best Famous John Burnside Poems

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Written by John Burnside | Landscapes Behind faces and gestures We remain mute And spoken words heavy With what we ignore or keep silent Betray us I dare not speak for mankind I know so little of myself But the Landscape I see as a reflection Is also a lie stealing into My words I speak without remorse Of this image of myself And mankind my unequaled torment I speak of Desert without repose Carved by relentless winds Torn up from its bowels Blinded by sands Unsheltered solitary Yellow as death Wrinkled like parchment Face turned to the sun. I speak Of men's passing So rare in this arid land That it is cherished like a refrain Until the return Of the jealous wind And of the bird, so rare, Whose fleeting shadow Soothes the wounds made by the sun And of the tree and the water Named Oasis For a woman's love I speak of the voracious Sea Reclaiming shells from beaches Waves from children The faceless Sea Its hundreds of drowned faces Wrapped in seaweed Slippery and green Like creatures of the deep The reckless Sea, unfinished story, Removed from anquish Full of death tales I speak of open valleys Fertile at men's feet Overgrown with flowers Of captive summits Of mountains, of clear skies Devoured by untamed evergreens And of trees that know The welcome of lakes Black earth Errant pathways Echoes of the faces Haunting our days.

Written by John Burnside | Landscapes Behind faces and gestures We remain mute And spoken words heavy With what we ignore or keep silent Betray us I dare not speak for mankind I know so little of myself But the Landscape I see as a reflection Is also a lie stealing into My words I speak without remorse Of this image of myself And mankind my unequaled torment I speak of Desert without repose Carved by relentless winds Torn up from its bowels Blinded by sands Unsheltered solitary Yellow as death Wrinkled like parchment Face turned to the sun. I speak Of men's passing So rare in this arid land That it is cherished like a refrain Until the return Of the jealous wind And of the bird, so rare, Whose fleeting shadow Soothes the wounds made by the sun And of the tree and the water Named Oasis For a woman's love I speak of the voracious Sea Reclaiming shells from beaches Waves from children The faceless Sea Its hundreds of drowned faces Wrapped in seaweed Slippery and green Like creatures of the deep The reckless Sea, unfinished story, Removed from anquish Full of death tales I speak of open valleys Fertile at men's feet Overgrown with flowers Of captive summits Of mountains, of clear skies Devoured by untamed evergreens And of trees that know The welcome of lakes Black earth Errant pathways Echoes of the faces Haunting our days.

Written by John Burnside | Agoraphobia My whole world is all you refuse: a black light, angelic and cold on the path to the orchard, fox-runs and clouded lanes and the glitter of webbing, little owls snagged in the fruit nets out by the wire and the sense of another life, that persists when I go out into the yard and the cattle stand round me, obstinate and dumb. All afternoon, I've worked at the edge of your vision, mending fences, marking out our bounds. Now it is dusk, I turn back to the house and catch you, like the pale Eurydice of children's classics, venturing a glance at nothing, at this washed infinity of birchwoods and sky and the wet streets leading away to all you forget: the otherworld, lucid and cold with floodlights and passing trains and the noise of traffic and nothing like the map you sometimes study for its empty bridlepaths, its hill-tracks and lanes and roads winding down to a coast of narrow harbors, lit against the sea.

Written by John Burnside | Snake As cats bring their smiling mouse-kills and hypnotised birds, slinking home under the light of a summer's morning to offer the gift of a corpse, you carry home the snake you thought was sunning itself on a rock at the river's edge: sun-fretted, gracile, it shimmies and sways in your hands like a muscle of light, and you gather it up like a braid for my admiration. I can't shake the old wife's tale that snakes never die, they hang in a seamless dream of frogskin and water, preserving a ribbon of heat in a bone or a vein, a cold-blooded creature's promise of resurrection, and I'm amazed to see you shuffle off the woman I've know for years, tracing the lithe, hard body, the hinge of the jaw, the tension where sex might be, that I always assume is neuter, when I walk our muffled house at nightfall, throwing switches, locking doors.

Written by John Burnside | Septuagesima 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.

Written by John Burnside | Snake I saw a young snake glide Out of the mottled shade And hang, limp on a stone: A thin mouth, and a tongue Stayed, in the still air. It turned; it drew away; Its shadow bent in half; It quickened and was gone I felt my slow blood warm. I longed to be that thing. The pure, sensuous form. And I may be, some time.