in the meantime, reading david manicom (again) on the bus this morning: such beauty.
signs of evening.
colour runs from the tipped bowl.
the birch are black,
all silver drained
below earth to water
that dilutes tones of memory
with the solvent of passing.
the march sky is grey.
this is what i know
as the smoke from the houses
rises like twisted ghosts
around etched fingers and limbs,
losing itself in the grey socket
of consumptive sky -
for smoke is always greyness.
and this metaphor a habit
of the smoke-grey sky
that has no colour of its own
and fits itself at last
articulate, signified.
the rain has made my hair cold.
you have been gone
have been going
such a very long time.
it is the sky that is lost,
dissolved in the name
that belongs to slow forgetting.
the trees wait to be taken.
