Cool, the lochside road and still. Leaves already lifting at my approach, frail under the shedding trees; sheer plenitude of road, a brim-filled bowl of light spilling white into the distance. The stag’s head swivels to an antlered mask, broad-legged, sinewy centaur’s neck: lord of silence, archangel above a stubbled field.
He leaps out from the plot, heart muscle singing with blood, springing from statue to flesh-arrow slicing blue shadows. Afterwards, in winged mirrors, the road at my back blanches and steadies.
A new prose poem of mine, to be published in Camper Van Blues, Salt Publishing, October 2008
5 comments:
v. good. Like it a lot. Distant whiffs of Mercian Hymns!
x
Very distant, I think! Only in terms of structure, i.e. that it's a prose poem. Hill calls his prose poems in Mercian Hymns verselets, I think, or something like that.
Having said that, these things are all open to personal interpretation, aren't they?
Or, to quote that interview with China Miéville on the Horizon site, 'what the fuck do writers know?'
Jx ;)
I thought the last phrases of the first paragraph were terribly Hill, actually. The beautiful 'archangel above a stubbled field' is reminiscent of his statement that poetry is an epiphany or annunciation, not the filtering of one's ideas and emotions into a mellifluous medium.
xx
I thank you for that!
"That Jane Holland is like Scotland ... terribly Hilly."
The bit about the road is a touch overwrought. I should have left out 'of light' and just had 'a brim-filled bowl spilling white into the distance.' I see that now, though rather too late to do anything about it.
Oh well, it'll have to wait for a Selected. ;)
Perhaps. It's a fine poem! xx
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