And five more new poems

.

By PATRICK WILLIAMSON.

1.Blind man’s fog

We shoreline to the edge, and
when there is no edge anymore

it becomes very scary, the snow
that divides melancholy from a life

in the smallest fraction of the possible
muffles all the sounds, disorients

with unfulfilled light, as we hesitate
on indefinite kerbs of the conscience,

feeling the presence of minute conflicts
provides some comfort in nothing,

all journeys are a bit more terrifying
feet stilled with indescribable sleep

that softly placed its fabric over bodies,
tried to make them breathe their last.

♦

2.Dissolving

The door the wind opened to
countryside intricate with light

the sun footprints left on stones
you went barefoot over ditches

sea salt attracted shafts to skin
water dissolved the bed over time

the body will disappear from desire
it will vanish from his craving

he will flee the sea from his beach
wordless they no longer are

inside these bodies there is a heart
that if isolated will die.

♦

3.Notes on Fenland

Creep over the brow
cling to steep sides,

the sun’s influence
on motion, brook bubbles

give life a silvery gleam,
mass keeps us grounded

in the hollows of moor
and outfall, skirt the fell

there is much still to see
a great quantity just below

the surface, and the path
winds on, we just landed

♦

4.Looking down at

this ocean this fluff of floating
suspended between two worlds
and zero is a number to divide
not time, but the times: those
of snow-mists and mobile skies,
cloud banks bursting upwards,
warm white inside, so far, so how

sparse a life that accepts languages
for reasons of fate and longing,
these pathways, interiors, fires
of stars, walls of shadow, the long
decline of the eye to the porthole

Earth

♦

5.Moon-time

The gibbous one greet me coldly,
rain squeezed me int’pub but maid
tek n’gorm. Scarpered. Blasted
slippery soles. The boots is off.

The moon-eyed peer through net,
rakers prowl the cussen gates,
addled so an’ all. She scuttled,
turned back away from my shiner,

my gloved hand, fingers waiting
to catch the moon-dark when falls
from pocket, as tha moon-call

sung in square. I’m no closer, is it
not a lost cause, or no cause t’all,
cheese it, tha squinten puddle-face!

♦

6.All notes lead here

We ride past rows of cypresses
staves in the sunlight, climb
these trilled steps to clusters
of clock-towers with roof scales,
set up our stands, let us barter
we are offshoots of a staff,
rays of sound scattered in the hills,
our banter livens the twilight
we are on the road to somewhere
as mountains curve the score
of each valley, route to the hubbub,
we are prelude, adagio, coda
we are all notes but only the one

♦

Patrick Williamson is editor and translator of The Parley Tree: Poets from French-speaking Africa and the Arab World (Arc Publications, 2012) and translator of selected poems Tunisian poet Tahar Bekri and Quebecois poet Gilles Cyr, as well as poems by Italian poets Guido Cupani and Erri de Luca. Notably, three poetry collections published by Samuele Editore, in English-Italian and translated by Guido Cupani: Traversi, Beneficato (previously in English only as Gifted, Corrupt Press) and Nel Santuario (Menzione speciale della Giuria in the XV Concorso Guido Gozzano, 2014). Founding member of transnational literary agency Linguafranca.