the sea
siubhal
a grey heron landing
on top of sea-wrack,
folding wings
attending to what’s near
on stones of an ebb-shore,
seeing the slippery ocean;
hearing the sea swallowing,
and brine chafing pebbles
seeing the cold water,
listening to beach uproar;
breaking on slabs,
the restless sea
leumluth
a demure heron landing
lowering her legs
on top of sea-wrack,
maroon and vile-smelling;
folding her wings close
– neat, quite fastidious –
attending to what’s near
on the bare stones of the ebb-shore
above the tide-line,
seeing the slippery ocean
light-patterned, netted;
hearing the sea swallowing
- gutteral, glottal -
and brine chafing pebbles
seeing the cold salt water
of a cut-off lochan,
listening to beach uproar,
slap of water on water;
breaking on flat slabs
– raised beach or skerry –
the restless sea
taorluath
a demure grey heron landing
lowering her long legs
atop scattered sea-wrack,
midged, maroon and foul-smelling;
folding her wide wings close,
neat, if not fastidious,
and attending to what’s near her
on the bare stones of the ebb-shore
above the tide’s kelp-line,
seeing the slippery ocean
bright-light-patterned and fretted;
hearing the throated sea swallow
gutterally, glottally,
and its brine chafe at pebbles
seeing the cold trembling water
of an arm of a sea-loch,
listening to the beach uproar,
percussive slapping of water;
breaking headlong on slabs
of raised beach or skerry
is the restless sea
Crunnluath [crown-variation]
a demure grey heron landing limber
lowering long legs and brown feet sluggishly
to alight on a spot she’d once arisen from
on wave-scattered bladder-wrack,
midgy, maroon, slimy, foul-smelling;
compactly folding widths of wings close,
neatly, fastidiously, leaving her free
to turn an eye’s yellow iris
to attend to what’s near her
on the bare pale gneiss of the ebb-shore
above the syzygied spring-tide’s
storm-blurred kelp-line,
with the sun descending a flame of wrath:
seeing the ocean, slippery, reticulate,
bright, light, and speckle-patterned;
hearing the sea’s weeded throat
stuttering, swallowing, glottal and gutteral,
spitting at froth, its brine chafing at pebbles
seeing the tremulous salt-packed sea-cold water
of a lochan’s inlet cut off from the loch,
listening to the noise of each agile wave
in its rising, its falling, and its swift rebounding,
each reach of beach’s reverberating roaring,
percussive slapping, water on water, as spray cascades;
and – breaking headlong on craggy slabs
of ceaselessly battered raised beach or skerry –
are the dark deep waves of the restless sea
urlar
a heron landing
on top of sea-wrack
folding her wings
attending what’s near
on the stones of the ebb-shore
seeing the slippery ocean
hearing sea swallowing
and brine chafing pebbles
seeing cold water
listening to uproar
the breaking on slabs
of the restless sea
for Michael Finnissy
air’s susurrus
through the rushes:
the gaps matter
as much as the stems,
the stalks, all
quavers in the wind
Song 9
and their hands, the way
they hold their hands,
pianists I mean, in
the pauses, poised, held,
in a way thought
could only default,
still, as a leaf
curled as it dried,
or a crab’s shell
upright on shingle
for Ian Pace
Afar / Alongside
Afar
for Michael Finnissy
afar
the sea
the eye
watches …
grass
at a rock’s base
moves
in thin wind
stretched &
torn
in precarious
balance,
all places
empty to
Pascal’s
space (m’effraie …) – the
inkspatter of
stars, their
inconspicuous traces
Alongside
for Michael Finnissy
alongside
empty mills
and rye-fields,
riders
under willows,
by the field’s edge
where rye-stalks stir
in the breeze
small claws
where leaf-
blade
meets stem,
long awns
rising
from the heads
of the rye
shaken by hooves
and banners, the
song of bugles,
afar
walk the line
to walk
far from silently
amid the tumble
of breakers, the
skewed and
varicose roll of
the surf, its
fetch backed up
far beyond the isle’s
end and its
thunder ended
in the swirl and hiss
of back-wash back down
through the ochre pebbles:
the sea is not calm
today, but showing
angry white tips
on lip-curling in-
volute trem-
ulous masses of
water cascading:
along the shore
splash and splash
and fall of waves:
this sea trails
a long line of spray,
cradles stone,
steadfast;
embraces, grasps, fondles,
kneads, strokes and polishes
then lets its load drop
onto sluiced
gravel, lack-
ing the vigour
to pull it back
to the ocean,
swash
buckling under
and returning
as back-
wash, waves
moving in each
speck of each
wave …
from that
grating roar
sound grades
down to where
there’s no sound:
ebbing over that
threshold the
white noise
of white water
withdrawing through
shingle, accompan-
iment to the crunch
of cleat on sea-
polished gravel,
laminar pebbles
rememb’ring cliffs
and distant rivers,
moving
slowly
(a)long-shore
drifting: as
force’s push
gives in
to gravity’s pull
beach-rubble
moves: sorted
assortedly,
each pebble
graded along
the long
littoral …
under the fall
of a foot’s weight
shingle slides
sideways ’til
frictive packing
anchors it: to
walk the line
along the sea’s
fringe, on the
shadowed ledge
of the shingle
berm, boot falls
after boot-fall
along the cusp
of the ridge
a brief sun
sits on
under storm-
grey cloud
as heavy as chert,
granite-massy
as the sky
in the storm’s
aftermath: salt-
spray vortices
are spun in the air,
spindrift worked
by the endless
wind, droplets ri-
ding in eyebrows
and hair …
the clouds
lie low
at the water’s edge
behind the shipping
that rode out the weather:
the horizon a line
of thin, pale grey
and the line we’re walking
pointillist beige, ovoids of
wave-shaped chert: no
colour else, save the flash
of rich yellow
on a cormorant’s
neck …
fly-catching martins
criss-cross the axis we’re tracing
moving into and
out of unison, feet falling
on gravel, repe-
tition repetition,
in cadence as oft-
en as disrup-
ted by chance – and
how is it far, if one
can think of it? – with
grandmotherly care
a skein of wind-
propelled water
wraps itself round
and drenches us all;
new rain spills
from a half
’f a broken boat-
float, gurg
-ling as it percolates
down through the pebbles;
wind bats corks
varec and kelp
across a terrace
of the tide’s
making; a piece
of twice-shaped wood
sits stranded, alone,
isolate
from all purpose…
light
clarifies
the right-angled
rain-shadow
behind a washed-
up plank, the
ridge is littered with
sea-sculpted plastic
& a moment
of light
hits a
broken oar …
brittle
shells, fragile and
hollow, are
scattered, and
gulls’ skulls too
dot the shingle,
bleached off-white:
bright compared
to dull gleam of pebbles
water-varnished
but paler under
if turned over to show
bellies ivory as
young herring-gulls’
plumage…
we’re
walking the line,
feeling small pebbles
under our boot-
soles, step after
step after step
after step, pausing only
to lift a curve of float
to find a spider be-
neath it
in a careful, dry, web
replaced with due care
not quite
where it came from …
leaping
pucker of rainpelted
water,
squall falling
roughly on beach
and beach-flowers
alike: on sea-
pink, bladed
orache and
sinuous eel-
grass, thin shadows
sparse as
sunlight …
hic salta,
here sand-grains dance
in the whirling zone
between wave and
sea-floor, obedient to orders
in glossolalic morse
from a rusting hawser
tapping a flagpole …
stones
guttural under the feet,
small ones weaseling
into each sole’s
every crevice
as boots slip
on rolling pebbles: a
cormorant’s shadow
is black on grey-
veined water, sea-poppies
as pale as the common
moon, silent, in-
visible, that tugs
at the surf;
ahead, a
new tide, Silene
vulgaris, bladder-
weed, riding
on a far slower
swell; sea
-campion’s white
globular calices
bright nodes shining
on a ground of buff
gravel, this elongate spine
of fossil diatoms …
as the in-
step slides pebbles
ride and settle: a
young gull
strokes the water,
the wind
makes waves,
and each wave’s
spill, plunge
and surge
renews the beach,
creating, pre-
serving,
destroying;
each sound
lost
in the sound
of water:
though time
might cease,
there’s silence here
never;
white froth
climbs, dark waves
break, foam and
tumble
out ’f the loud-
roaring sea,
alongside the scutter
of eddied pebbles
walking their line.
thinking of Evan,
walking on Chesil
the turn, not
linguistic and
not philo-
sophical, but akin
to the swerve ’f a flight
’f plover off shingle,
black backs in fact
as dun as the pebbles
but darkened in shadow,
just ’s their fronts ’re
whitened by sun
over the diamond sea;
in angles and arcs
moving neither as One
nor as the Many
but in a stochastic weave
pervasive through space,
stiff wing-
beats shape
a loop-
hole in air,
cut through
the hierarchy
of language,
a space where agility
can melt
into sunlight …
Webern sings The Keel Row for Howard
voices
singing, tune in
a round,
an air
moving, equal
measure:
turning
the row, held and
dancing –
sae blithe,
sae sprightly an
bonny:
– dancing,
held, a row that’s
turning,
measured,
equal, moving
in air;
around
the tune, singing
voices
six translations of Matsuo Bashō’s fūryū-no / hajime ya oku no / ta-ue-uta inside a poem for Cecilia Vicuña
a beginning,
deep
in labour
as fire
springing,
living –
a start,
poetry
from nowhere:
to find,
now, an
opening,
grace
beginning
in the heart;
seeing,
placed
and busy,
refinement
in the innermost
part –
footprints
mark out
a track,
art
starts
in work –
words
suspended
in air:
aesthetics
initially
song
an egg for E.
ur-
object from
any point of view,
summed mathematical
constraints, ellipsoid in its
flow, both bellied as a viol
and curved like a pear; like
that pair a paradigm of limit:
closed, perfect, pointless,
its point must be its
hatching into the
potentialities
of song
remembering Scott LaFaro
shed notes
leave
the
double bass
a gentle
heart
strongly
held
– for who’s
absolved
from
the play
of the
mind?
– wind
and light
move the
leaves
day
and night
leave no
moves
scored
and cut