FALLING AWAKE
Alice Oswald
CONTENTS
A Short Story of Falling
Swan
Flies
Fox
Severed Head Floating Downriver
Cold Streak
Body
A Rushed Account of the Dew
Shadow
Village
Vertigo
Looking Down
Alongside Beans
A Drink from Cranmere Pool
Slowed-Down Blackbird
Dunt
Two Voices
Sunday Ballad
You Must Never Sleep under a Magnolia
Aside
Sz
Evening Poem
Tithonus
And so he goes on
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FALLING AWAKE
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
SWAN
A rotted swan
is hurrying away from the plane-crash mess of her wings
one here
one there
getting panicky up out of her clothes and mid-splash
looking down again at what a horrible plastic
mould of herself split-second
climbing out of her own cockpit
and lifting away again and bending back for another look thinking
strange
strange
what are those two white clips that connected my strength
to its floatings
and lifting away again and bending back for another look
at the clean china serving-dish of a breast bone
and how thickly the symmetrical quill-points
were threaded in backwards through the leather underdress
of the heart saying
strange
strange
it’s not as if such fastenings could ever contain
the regular yearning wing-beat of my evenings
and that surely can’t be my own black feet
lying poised in their slippers
what a waste of detail
what a heaviness inside each feather
and leaving her life and all its tools
with their rusty juices trickling back to the river
she is lifting away she is taking a last look thinking
quick
quick
say something to the
frozen cloud of the head
before it thaws
whose one dead eye
is a growing cone of twilight
in the middle of winter
it is snowing there
and the bride has just set out
to walk to her wedding
but how can she reach
the little black-lit church
it is so cold
the bells like iron angels
hung from one note
keep ringing and ringing
FLIES
This is the day the flies fall awake mid-sentence
and lie stunned on the window-sill 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
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
SEVERED HEAD FLOATING DOWNRIVER
It is said that after losing his wife, Orpheus was torn to pieces by Maenads, who threw his head into the River Hebron. The head went on singing and forgetting, filling
up with water and floating away.
Eurydicealready forgetting who she is
with her shoes missing
and the grass coming up through her feet
searching the earth
for the bracelet of tiny weave on her charcoal wrist
the name of a fly or floweralready forgetting who they are
they grow they grow
till their bodies break their necks
down there in the stone world
where the grey spirits of stones lie around uncertain of their limits
matter is eating my mindI am in a river
I in my fox-cap
floating between the speechless reeds
I always wake like this being watched
already forgetting who I am
the water wears my maskI callI call
lying under its lashes like a glance
if only a child on a bridge would hoik me out
there comes a tremor and there comes a pause
down there in the underworld
where the tired stones have fallen
and the sand in a trance lifts a little
it is always midnight in those pools
iron insects engraved in sleep
I always wake like this being watched
I always speak to myself
no more myself but a colander
draining the sound from this never-to-be-mentioned wound
can you hear it
you with your long shadows and your short shadows
can you hear the severed head of Orpheus
no I feel nothing from the neck down
already forgetting who I am
the crime goes on without volition singing in its bone
not I not I
the water drinks my mind
as if bent to my books
only my face exists sliding over a waterfall
and there where the ferns hang over the dark
and the midges move between mirrors
some woman has left her shoes
two crumpled mouths
which my voice searches in and out
my voice being water
which holds me together and also carries me away
until the facts forget themselves gradually like a contrail
and all this week
a lime-green light troubles the riverbed
as if the mud was haunted by the wood
this is how the wind works hard at thinking
this is what speaks when no one speaks
COLD STREAK
I notice a cold streak
I notice it in the sun
all that dazzling stubbornness
of keeping to its clock
I notice the fatigue of flowers
weighed down by light
I notice the lark has a needle
pulled through its throat
why don’t they put down their instruments?
I notice they never pause
I notice the dark sediment of their singing
covers the moors like soot blown under a doorway
almost everything here has cold hands
I notice the wind wears surgical gloves
I notice the keen pale colours of the rain
like a surgeon’s assistant
why don’t they lift their weight
and see what’s flattened underneath it?
I notice the thin meticulous grass,
thrives in this place
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
A RUSHED ACCOUNT OF THE DEW
I who can blink
to break the spell of daylight
and what a sliding screen between worlds
is a blink
I who can hear the last three seconds in my head
but the present is beyond me
listen
in this tiny moment of reflexion
I want to work out what it’s like to descend
out of the dawn’s mind
and find a leaf and fasten the known to the unknown
with a liquid cufflink
and then unfasten
to be brief
to be almost actual
oh pristine example
of claiming a place on the earth
only to cancel
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
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
VILLAGE
Somebody out late again say what you like
sinister walk throwing one foot forward
black jumble-sale clothes with a bit of string around the knees
going over the mud with a tread like that throwing one foot forward
somebody out not back being out again
walking every evening as regular as the rooks
throwing one foot forward so many names in this place are you listening
taking his bucket to the tap
John Strong
that’s him bursting full of himself hook-nosed sinister walk
scars on each side of the wrist no teeth
not known for his beauty having been shot in the mouth
black jumble-sale clothes
[...]
somebody out thankfully not me out lost in the mud
somebody lost out late again say what you like
a boot by the granite trough not many of us left
living in the slippery maybe the last green places are you listening
not many of us left not much movement
in the blackening lanes among a few low trees
little flocks of orchids in the ditches nobody cares
it’s as dark as a pond down here we could do with a hedge-flail
with a scythe somebody with a scythe
you can hear him smashing through six-foot nettles
black jumble-sale clothes with a bit of string around the knees
so as the rats won’t run up his legs are you listening
Thomas Lytch
that’s him in the rain now
somebody with a tread like that
very chilblain slow with a lump on his toe
just saw him on the way back home again mud in his mouth
[...]
I said the dirt gets right into your fingers
living under the trees like this the toads don’t mind it
this is god’s honest truth there’s one about as big as a bucket
hops out of the nettles every night you can say what you like
that’s him slugging about the village bent-headed
heavily laden with the cold you can tell it’s him
spillikin legs always wet for some reason
always poking the verges looking for a tasty bit of nothing
a
lways wet for some reason always standing like a bale in the rain
remembering better times whereas naming no names
some of us would rather not remember something
some of us have got enough bloody nightmares already
somebody a bundle of nerves ever since the wall came down
won’t barely go out of the church now
ever since a bat swooped in like a pair of leather gloves feeling her face
had to dive under the pews for cover this is god’s honest truth
Joyce Jones
just heard her voice again say what you like
cold nights without streetlights
walking to the sea perhaps
on the soft of her feet with a stout stick why
[...]
somebody out peering out not me
red face at the window regular every evening
not noted for his warmth this is god’s honest truth
not noted for his warmth no wife