Walking
Past a Rose This June Morning
is my heart a rose? how unspeakable
is my heart a rose? how unspeakable
is my heart folded to dismantle? how unspeakable
is a rose folded in its nerves? how unspeakable
is my heart secretly overhanging us? pause
is there a new world? known only to breathing?
now inhale what I remember. pause. how unbreathable
this is my heart out. how unspeakable
this is my risen skin. how unthinkable
this is my tense touch-sensitive heart
this is its mass made springy by the rain
this loosening compression of hope. how unworkable
is an invisible ray lighting up your lungs? how invisible?
is it a weightless rapture? pause. how weightless?
now trace a breath-map in the air. how invisible?
is a rose a turning cylinder of senses? how unspeakable
is this the ghost of the heart, the actual
the inmost deceleration of its thought? how unspeakable
is everything still speeding around us? pause
is my heart the centre? how unbearable
is the rain a halo? how unbearable
Narcissus
Once I was half flower, half self,
That invisible self whose absence inhabits mirrors,
That invisible flower that is always inwardly,
Once I was half flower, half self,
That invisible self whose absence inhabits mirrors,
That invisible flower that is always inwardly,
Groping
up through us, a kind of outswelling weakness,
Yes once I was half frail, half glittering,
Continually emerging from the store of the self itself,
Always staring at rivers, always
Nodding and leaning to one side, I came gloating up,
And for a while I was half skin half breath,
For a while I was neither one thing nor another,
A waterflame, a variable man-woman of the verges,
Wearing the last self-image I was left with
Before my strenth went down down into the darkness
For the best of the year and lies crumpled
In a clot of sleep at the root of nothings all
Yes once I was half frail, half glittering,
Continually emerging from the store of the self itself,
Always staring at rivers, always
Nodding and leaning to one side, I came gloating up,
And for a while I was half skin half breath,
For a while I was neither one thing nor another,
A waterflame, a variable man-woman of the verges,
Wearing the last self-image I was left with
Before my strenth went down down into the darkness
For the best of the year and lies crumpled
In a clot of sleep at the root of nothings all
Words In Motion - Alice Oswald, Narcissus By Alice Robinson.Vimeo
Head of
a Dandelion
This is the dandelion with its thousand faculties
like an old woman taken by the neck
and shaken to pieces.
This is the dust-flower flitting away.
This is the flower of amnesia.
It has opened its head to the wind,
all havoc and weakness,
as if a wooden man should stroll through fire…
In this unequal trial, one thing
controls the invisible violence of the air,
the other gets smashed and will not give in.
One thing flexes its tail causing widespread devastation,
it takes hold of the trees, it blows their failings out of them,
it throws in sideways, it flashes the river upriver;
the other thing gives up its skin and bones,
goes up in smoke, lets go of its ashes…
and this is the flower of no property,
this is the wind-bitten dandelion
worn away to its one recalcitrant element
like when Osiris
blows his scales and weighs the soul with a feather.
Hymn to Iris
Quick moving goddess of the rainbow
You whose being is only an afterglow of a passing-through
Put your hands
Put your heaven-taken shape down
On the ground. Now. Anywhere
Like a bent- down bough of nothing
A bridge built out of the linked cells of thin air
And let there be instantly in its underlight –
At street corners, on swings, out of car windows –
A three-moment blessing for all bridges
May impossible rifts be often delicately crossed
By bridges of two thrown ropes or one dropped plank
May the unfixed forms of water be warily leaned over
On flexible high bridges, huge iron sketches of the mathematics of strain
And bridges of see-through stone, the living-space of drips and echoes
May two fields be bridged by a stile
And two hearts by the tilting footbridge of a glance
And may I often wake on the broken bridge of a word,
Like in the wind the trace of a web. Tethered to nothing
In Praise of Postmen
Dear
Sir, I am sending to you my voice. up Moorlands Close, down Brookfield Ave.
My voice is strange, I have unsewn the sound and send only the bones,
seeing as somehow all being is bent on turning its moment into print.
Like even the rain mutters its common name as it drips upwind.
Right now I am going to melt and extend into new signs,
so that postmen, seven hours all weekday dawns, can walk the shortcuts of small towns
carrying these fly-wing weights, the dried leavings of my nights.
Whistling spirits of the written world,
who set out when the road has nothing to be seen by but a streetlight's glass eye,
but their feet can write the route with eyes shut.
Think what they glimpse of us, still in slippers, in warm furred interiors -
illegible creatures, as we exist, if we exist at all between letters.
This one is me - a sour old lady throwing out last week's lilies;
and this is you, an ocularist, giving a loose glass eye a little twist
to throw new light on what I whispered to my hands last thing last night.
Shadow
I'm
going to flicker for a moment
and tell you the tale of a shadow
that falls at dusk
out of the blue to the earth
and turns left along the path to here
groggily under its black-out
being dragged along crippled over things as if broken-winged
not yet continuous
no more than a shiver of something
with the flesh parachute of a human opening above it
but lengthening a little as it descends through the rings
of one hour into the next
with the rooks flying upwards snipping at the clouds
until at last out of that opening here it lies
my own impersonal pronoun
crumpled under me like a dead body
it is faint
it has been falling for a long time
look when I walk
it's like a pair of scissors thrown at me by the sun
so that now as if my skin were not quite tucked in
I am cold cold
trying to slide myself out of my own shade
but hour by hour more shade leaks out
or if I stand
if I move one hand
I hear the hiss of flowers closing their eyelids
and the trees
as if dust was being beaten from a rug
shake out their birds and in again
it's as if I've interrupted something
that was falling in a straight line from the eye of God
and if I do nothing
the ground gives up
the almost minty clarity of its grass begins to fade
the white moths under the leaves
are amazed
and tell you the tale of a shadow
that falls at dusk
out of the blue to the earth
and turns left along the path to here
groggily under its black-out
being dragged along crippled over things as if broken-winged
not yet continuous
no more than a shiver of something
with the flesh parachute of a human opening above it
but lengthening a little as it descends through the rings
of one hour into the next
with the rooks flying upwards snipping at the clouds
until at last out of that opening here it lies
my own impersonal pronoun
crumpled under me like a dead body
it is faint
it has been falling for a long time
look when I walk
it's like a pair of scissors thrown at me by the sun
so that now as if my skin were not quite tucked in
I am cold cold
trying to slide myself out of my own shade
but hour by hour more shade leaks out
or if I stand
if I move one hand
I hear the hiss of flowers closing their eyelids
and the trees
as if dust was being beaten from a rug
shake out their birds and in again
it's as if I've interrupted something
that was falling in a straight line from the eye of God
and if I do nothing
the ground gives up
the almost minty clarity of its grass begins to fade
the white moths under the leaves
are amazed
Shadow,
written and read by Alice Oswald. The Poetry Society
Body
This is
what happened
the dead were settling in under their mud roof
and something was shuffling overhead
it was a badger treading on the thin partition
bewildered were the dead
going about their days and nights in the dark
putting their feet down carefully and finding themselves floating
but that badger
still with the simple heavy box of his body needing to be lifted
was shuffling away alive
hard at work
with the living shovel of himself
into the lane he dropped
not once looking up
and missed the sight of his own corpse falling like a suitcase towards him
with the grin like an opened zip
(as I found it this morning)
and went on running with that bindweed will of his
went on running along the hedge and into the earth again
trembling
as if in a broken jug for one backwards moment
water might keep its shape
the dead were settling in under their mud roof
and something was shuffling overhead
it was a badger treading on the thin partition
bewildered were the dead
going about their days and nights in the dark
putting their feet down carefully and finding themselves floating
but that badger
still with the simple heavy box of his body needing to be lifted
was shuffling away alive
hard at work
with the living shovel of himself
into the lane he dropped
not once looking up
and missed the sight of his own corpse falling like a suitcase towards him
with the grin like an opened zip
(as I found it this morning)
and went on running with that bindweed will of his
went on running along the hedge and into the earth again
trembling
as if in a broken jug for one backwards moment
water might keep its shape
Flies
This is the day the flies fall awake mid-sentence
and lie stunned on the windowsill shaking with speeches
only it isn’t speech it is trembling sections of puzzlement which
break off suddenly as if the questioner had been shot
this is one of those wordy days
when they drop from their winter quarters in the curtains and sizzle as they fall
feeling like old cigarette butts called back to life
blown from the surface of some charred world
and somehow their wings which are little more than flakes of dead skin
have carried them to this blackened disembodied question
what dirt shall we visit today?
what dirt shall we re-visit?
they lift their faces to the past and walk about a bit
trying out their broken thought-machines
coming back with their used-up words
there is such a horrible trapped buzzing wherever we fly
it’s going to be impossible to think clearly now until next winter
what should we
what dirt should we
Fox
I heard
a cough
as if a thief was there
as if a thief was there
outside
my sleep
a sharp intake of air
a fox in her fox-fur
stepping across
the grass in her black gloves
barked at my house
just so abrupt and odd
the way she went
hungrily asking
in the heart's thick accent
in such serious sleepless
trespass she came
a woman with a man's voice
but no name
as if to say: it's midnight
and my life
is laid beneath my children
like gold leaf
a sharp intake of air
a fox in her fox-fur
stepping across
the grass in her black gloves
barked at my house
just so abrupt and odd
the way she went
hungrily asking
in the heart's thick accent
in such serious sleepless
trespass she came
a woman with a man's voice
but no name
as if to say: it's midnight
and my life
is laid beneath my children
like gold leaf
Owl
last night at the joint of dawn
an owl’s call opened the darkness
miles away, more than a world beyond this room
and immediately, I was in the woods again,
poised, seeing my eyes seen,
hearing my listening heard,
under a huge tree improvised by fear
dead brush falling then a star
straight through to God
founded and fixed the wood
then out, until it touched the town’s lights,
an owl’s elsewhere swelled and questioned
twice, like you might lean and strike
two matches in the wind
Dream
secretary
Last
thing each night, go out for the moon.
Pull on old coat, shut garden gate.
Roll up old sleeves. Swing arms. Poor soul.
Think moonset. Moonrise. All running to schedule.
World black and white. Walk up the lane.
Last thing each night. Look up for the moon.
No sign but rain. Almost back home.
One more last quick. Glance up for the moon.
Eyes stripped to the darkness. Can’t help but notice
Little desklamp glow. As from upstairs window.
Shoulder of a woman. There, that’s her.
Very old poor soul, maybe all but gone.
Last thing each night, flick on flick off.
Flick on flick off. Little hand torch halo.
There that’s her. Last thing each night,
Letting only the light of a white sleeve show.
Sometimes the moon is more an upstairs window,
Curtains not quite drawn but lit within and lived in.
And sometimes the moon is less and
Sometimes she moves behind and sometimes she’s gone.
Sometimes it’s the moon. Sometimes it’s the rain.
Pull on old coat, shut garden gate.
Roll up old sleeves. Swing arms. Poor soul.
Think moonset. Moonrise. All running to schedule.
World black and white. Walk up the lane.
Last thing each night. Look up for the moon.
No sign but rain. Almost back home.
One more last quick. Glance up for the moon.
Eyes stripped to the darkness. Can’t help but notice
Little desklamp glow. As from upstairs window.
Shoulder of a woman. There, that’s her.
Very old poor soul, maybe all but gone.
Last thing each night, flick on flick off.
Flick on flick off. Little hand torch halo.
There that’s her. Last thing each night,
Letting only the light of a white sleeve show.
Sometimes the moon is more an upstairs window,
Curtains not quite drawn but lit within and lived in.
And sometimes the moon is less and
Sometimes she moves behind and sometimes she’s gone.
Sometimes it’s the moon. Sometimes it’s the rain.
Wood Not Yet Out
leaning all round to block it from the wind,
a squirrel sprinting in startles and sees
sections of distance tilted through the trees
and where you jump the fence a flap of sacking
does for a stile, you walk through webs, the cracking
bushtwigs break their secrecies, the sun
vanishes up, instantly come and gone.
once in, you hardly notice as you move,
the wood keeps lifting up its hope, I love
to stand among the last trees listening down
to the releasing branches where I've been—
the rain, thinking I've gone, crackles the air
and calls by name the leaves that aren't yet there
Sea Poem
loose inquisitive fragile anxious
a wave, a winged form
splitting up into sharp glances
after the rain stops you can hear the sea
washing rid of the world's increasing complexity,
making it perfect again out of perfect sand
into an entirely new structure
what is the depth of water
from which time has been rooted out
it can break glass or sink steel
treading drowners inwards down
what does it taste of
steep shafts warm streams
coal salt cod weed
dispersed outflows and flytipping
throwing two shadows
what is the beauty of water
sky is its beauty
Something is in the line and air along edges,
which is in woods when the leaf changes
and in the leaf-pattern's gives and gauges,
the water's tension upon ledges.
Something is taken up with entrances,
which turns the issue under bridges.
The moon is between places.
And outlet fills the space between two horses.
Look through a holey stone. Now put it down.
Something is twice as different. Something gone
accumulates a queerness. Be alone.
Something is side by side with anyone.
And certain evenings, something in the balance
falls to the dewpoint where our minds condense
and then inslides itself between moments
and spills the heart from its circumference;
and this is when the moon matchlessly opens
and you can feel by instinct in the distance
the bigger mountains hidden by the mountains,
like intentions among suggestions.
Wedding
From time to time our love is like a sail
and when the sail begins to alternate
from tack to tack, it’s like a swallowtail
and when the swallow flies it’s like a coat;
and if the coat is yours, it has a tear
like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins
to draw the wind, it’s like a trumpeter
and when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions…
and this, my love, when millions come and go
beyond the need of us, is like a trick;
and when the trick begins, it’s like a toe
tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;
and when the luck begins, it’s like a wedding,
which is like love, which is like everything.
Andrew
Motion reads the sonnet, 'Wedding', by Alice Oswald, and offers some short
thoughts on its greatness. Vimeo
Sea
Sonnet
A field, a sea-flower, three stones, a stile.
Not one thing close to another
throughout the air. The cliff’s uplifted lawns.
You and I walk light as wicker in virtual contact.
Prepositions lie exposed. All along
the swimmer is deeper than the water.
I have looked under the wave,
I saw your body floating on the darkness.
Oh time and water cannot touch.
Not touch. Only a blob far out,
your singularity and the sea’s
inalienable currents flow at angles…
and if I love you this is incidental
as on the sand one blue towel, one white towel.
Another Westminster Bridge
go and glimpse the lovely inattentive water
discarding the gaze of many a bored street walker
where the weather trespasses into strip-lit offices
through tiny windows into tiny thoughts and authorities
and the soft beseeching tapping of typewriters
take hold of a breath-width instant, stare
at water which is already elsewhere
in a scrapwork of flashes and glittery flutters
and regular waves of apparently motionless motion
under the teetering structures of administration
where a million shut-away eyes glance once
restlessly at the rivers ruts and glints
count five, then wander swiftly
away over the stone wing-bone of the city.
Evaporations
I
What I admire is Dew
To have the strength of Dew
To pass apparitional through a place
Without trace or title
To be Snow!
To be almost actual!
Oh pristine example
Of claiming a place on the earth
Only to cancel
Rain
Rain
Smashed against stone
I love leaf and un-leaf
Of frost and un-fern
All these incisions
And indecisions of the Dawn
Yes Yes there is Ice but I notice
The Water doesn’t like it so orderly
What Water admires
Is the slapstick rush of things melting
I have taken my bedding to the fields
First it was Mist
Uncontrollably whispering
Then it was Dew
Disclosing the cold in my mind
Saying simply that it
Comes from nothing
And will return to nothing
Then it was…
II
In their lunch hour
I saw the shop-workers get into water
They put their watches on the stones and slithered
frightened
Into the tight-fitting river
And shook out cuffs of splash
And swam wide strokes towards the trees
And after a while swam back
With rigid cormorant smiles
Shocked I suppose from taking on
Something impossible to think through
Something old and obsessive like the centre of a rose
And for that reason they quickly turned
And struggled out again and retrieved their watches
Stooped on the grass-line hurrying now
They began to laugh and from their meaty backs
A million crackling things
Burst into flight which was either water
Or the hour itself ascending.
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
A Short
Story Of Falling, Alice Oswald. Filming
and editing by Kathryn Oliver, narration by Catherine Pickstock, music by Zbigniew Preisner
Full
Moon
What did I dream last night?
I dreamt I was the moon.
I woke and found myself still asleep.
And I came and went at will through a little peephole.
I had no voice, no mouth, nothing to express my trouble,
except my shadows leaning downhill, not quite parallel.
Almost frost but softer, almost ash but wholer.
Made almost of water, which has strictly speaking
No feature, but a kind of counter-light, call it insight.
Their heads congealed together, having murdered each other,
There are moon-beings, sound-beings, such as deer and half-deer
Passing through there, whose eyes can pierce through things.
There's no material as variable as moonlight.
I was climbing, clinging to the underneath of my bones, thinking:
Good God! Who have I been last night?
Full-Length
Portrait of the Moon
caught off-guard on-guard.
With her hands stroking or strangling and maybe
with her intentions half-interred.
But she is as she is. Her gaze is always
filing away at its cord.
And what she's really after
is you to love her.
She could be so small
she almost has no smell.
She feels like anyone at all.
When you walk up to her,
she keeps quite still,
but what she answers to
is never loud enough to know.
her eyes are empty.
They could be watching you
or not. They work indifferently,
like lit-up glass and if you ask
why she won't speak, why should she?
When what she really wants
is silence.
Kay, Moira, Sandra.
They move through a dark room,
peering round under
the hoods of their names.
Alcestis, Clytemnestra.
She could be either of those.
She scarcely knows.
She goes on thinking something
just over your shoulder.
This could be the last night
before you lose her.
But what's the use
of saying one thing or another.
When what she's really after
is you to love her.
Pruning
in Frost
a ghost of a world lay down on a world,
coralled with increments of frost.
and wound and wound
the clock-spring cobwebs.
stone thumbs,
feet of glass.
Pain, turned heron,
could fly off slowly in a creak of wings.
cold-holy and granite kings,
getting carved into this effigy of orchard.
For Many
Hours there’s been an Old Couple Standing at that Window
Long ago they remember walking very slowly to the window.
They let their hearts sink to one side
And stood in their old clothes growing frost at the edges.
Only their eyes increasing into tiny stars. And then
Sunrise ?
A sudden eruption of circumstances.
There had never been so much beauty.
The sky, up to now unknown,
Burned a way out through a nearby horizon.
Their eyes were in disarray.
They moved cautiously to the brink of one glance and back.
And at each turn, morning was more there.
Like in the winterís splitting cold a crocus
Opens and then more opens.
As a steel template dipped in water
And they leaned, it looked as if their wings were caught in their coats …
And a whole surrounding atmosphere of persuasion;
Please realise, friends, time is moving in this neighbourhood.
This is Dawn, the unspeakable iridescence of all swiftness
Impatiently brushing past, be quick Ö
It fell at their feet, they
Shrank into sleep, their mouths
Dried, their dreams rattled in their pods.
They hardly knew who they were, they felt like twists
Of jointed grass, going on growing and growing.
Dunt: a
poem for a dried up river
a Roman water nymph made of bone
tries to summon a river out of limestone
her left arm missing and both legs from the knee down
a Roman water nymph made of bone
tries to summon a river out of limestone
a Roman water nymph made of bone
being the last known speaker of her language
she tries to summon a river out of limestone
very endangered now
in a largely unintelligible monotone
she tries to summon a river out of limestone
in her passionate self-esteem she smiles looking sideways
she seemingly has no voice but a throat-clearing rustle
as of dry grass try again
pouring pure outwardness out of a grey urn
who lies so low in the rickety willowherb
that a fox trots out of the woods
and over his back and away try again
pouring pure outwardness out of a grey urn
little lapping sounds yes
as of dry grass secretly drinking try again
as of dry grass secretly drinking try again
year after year in a sealed glass case
having lost the hearing of her surroundings
she struggles to summon a river out of limestone
a Roman water nymph made of bone
she struggles to summon a river out of limestone
not really moving through the fields
having had the gleam taken out of her
to the point where she resembles twilight try again
she opens the door of the church
little distant sounds of shut-away singing try again
wondering who to pray to
little patter of eyes closing try again
a Roman water nymph made of bone
she pleads she pleads a river out of limestone
not really moving through the fields,
having had the gleam taken out of it
to the point where it resembles twilight.
little grumbling shivering last-ditch attempt at a river
more nettles than water try again
her left arm missing and both legs from the knee down
she tries to summon a river out of limestone
low-burning glint of stones
rough-sleeping and trembling and clinging to its rights
victim of Swindon
puddle midden
slum of over-greened foot-churn and pats
whose crayfish are cheap tool-kits
made of the mud stirred up when a stone's lifted
struggling to keep up with what's already gone
the boat the wheel the sluice gate
the two otters larricking along go on
in the days of better rainfall
it would flood through five valleys
there'd be cows and milking stools
washed over the garden walls
and when it froze you could skate for five miles yes go on
beautiful disused route to the sea
fish path with nearly no fish in
Nobody
There is a harbour where an old sea-god sometimes surfaces
two cliffs keep out the wind you need no anchor
the water in fascinated horror holds your boat
at the far end of a thin-leaved olive casts a kind of evening over a cave
which is water’s house where it leads its double life
there are four stone bowls and four stone jars
and the bees of their own accord leave honey there
salt-shapes hang from the roof like giant looms
where the tide weaves leathery sea-nets
be amazed by that colour it is the mind’s inmost madness
but the sea itself has no character just this horrible thirst
goes on creeping over the stones and shrinking away
Kit Fan
talks with Alice Oswald about her latest book, Nobody. Fan’s review of the book
appears in the July/August 2020 issue of Poetry. The Poetry Foundation, July
27, 2020.
The Art
of Erosion. Inaugural Lecture of Alice Oswald, Professor of Poetry, held at the
University of Oxford Exam Schools. University of Oxford, December 9, 2019.
Alice
Oswald: ‘I like the way that the death of one thing is the beginning of
something else’. By Claire Armistead.
The Guardian , July 22, 2016.
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