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‘Echo Plus Star Equals’ and two more poems.

By SIMON SMITH.

ECHO PLUS STAR EQUALS

early valentine
seasons out of sync
each echo all
in the Greek
is to sing didactic
poems from the heart
& kiss the air
slant to order
of a distant radio
in need of retune
white lilies & sea asters
of white exploded petals
ghost perfume
the sentence whole & forward
a wave a green ray
for a second or two
the earth’s hinge & order
contingent temporally
the words shaken
then re-orientate
as iron filings are to the law
of magnetic fields odour
thread through passage
to follow the string
the line the sentence
through passage
or corridor through
the myth of plastic
is the weather real
test the air as an event
& evidence
evident design to live in
the earth temporarily out
of song
buy you a diamond
named “Nijinsky”
of greed & mink
& meat to starve
a planet
love of
Gaia to self-right
to echolocate
a bat a star a heart
called back into pulse
rate pulse interval
echo poem listening post
‘some echoing light too
late to be of use’ but of occasion
not transcendence
sheltered within the given
beside the Appearance
River ripples pebble from
of echoes & passages
a new currency to think in
this quivering world
curling back like a wave
echo shadow
called back to

.

JUST SONG CLOUD

my constellation luminous & stricken
the turn in nocturne
touched cypress fixed coordinates
abundant commodities its mineral level
the language through feet to the earth
the key lost in the Greek
since I last wrote “since”
skirting radar refer laced
a chord a fifth & a drinking song
not if but when
today I leave to newsprint
read my horoscope the sunset payments my palindrome
taken in by heaven mum & dad
dredge the skies & dread
gathering in the lull
& twilight
vanilla
I want a poem long & tall as a gift as a country song
present becoming past fade
away becoming history
memorial & unknown silent as radio waves all around
the transistor translates listening in to
my dad tilted
I will leave you a portrait
the Instamatic world instant
forever collapsing
Infinity
I will leave you Time the item
tuning to your body a landscape
gift you sand nuggets of chalk
the moon & its low cold glow
the star where light starts
from drifts away over time
in the form of clouds
titled what I leave you

.

PASSAGE (TENTATIVE)

passage to the evening star
galaxies strung out along the washing line
imaged imagined the magic & the risk
musicalities of note notes tumbling the frame by frame of film
as though the words don’t make the journey don’t complete don’t
but fall short in the night landscape trees fields hedges the faintest
lights
fail & drop fluidity now & now a shadow reflected from the face
the surface of Venus
now like when driving the kite swooped straight at me at the last
minute veered away
on wing me tracking the lure
the ark suspended in space in a capsule like a coracle
tracing where the morning star crosses
the evening star visible
leaves an impression the faintest light slanted against light
in the dim one heavenly object slightly resembles and reassembles
the objects close by
unicorns ghosts giraffes the whole menagerie aboard in pairs
a Venus unseen godly & ghostly through the telescope
a fluid identity or into visibility like a series of lost threads
inhabits me
the minerals of your eyes
Venus flickering light at the end of a long corridor
stars in the words of others
of echoes & passages a new currency to think in
with the naked eye
Jupiter & Saturn lining up the visible & speak into a darkness
to squeeze out the brightest point of light
the night sky all at once
pressing against the walls of the passage
bunch or group or clique
or cliché serendipity says the quotidian agrees
breath in the tendency to decompose on the air breathe in
the droplets coalesce
how the mirror presides
we become collocation
the collocation of things
& the stars are kind & a kind of key
seen through air through film seen through a vacuum
the starfish imitate the stars
deep time deep space deep water abyss
shadow stain trace watermark ghost
edge cliff outline boundary perimeter
this is what I leave you
you’ll never know why
it’s when you’ll feel the sunlight
the speaking into the poem as instrument
the rocket silent to the moon undoes the myth
& the myth of the myth the no coming back from
there then forgotten a failure of translation
the transmission transmitted in
this zone of blue this piece of sky this sector of heaven
passage to the evening star (twelve times over)

 


Simon Smith is a poet and translator who lives in London.  His last three books were published in 2018: The Books of Catullus (Carcanet), some Municipal Love Poems (Muscaliet), and DAY IN, DAY OUT (Parlor Press).
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