'Drysalter' by Michael Symmons Roberts
An early Xmas present suggestion?
I can't remember the last time I found such an exciting, sustained and even collection as 'Drysalter', winner of the 2014 Forward Prize. I found it in Ulverston Library after discovering Roberts in a recent number of the 'London Review of Books'.
Going through a volume I always make a note of the poems I particularly like but I have clocked fifteen already and I am only half way through the book.
There is something plain wilful about public libraries: it just doesn't make any economic sense in today's global system that an old geezer on his way to the bus stop in the rain with a bagful of shopping can simply walk into a building and walk off it with a treasure like this - scot free!
There's a loophole somewhere. You can't have austerity and free poetry.
It is heartening that there is still evidence of an public spirit - a commitment to the common good: I must take it back after I have filleted it with a Stanley knife.
I will force myself to select just four poems as a taster, each of which would make a great post on its own.
NIGHT FREIGHT
Our goods - in transit while we sleep-
are boxed to ride the rail-tracks, oceans,
new roads cut by truck-lights, all to keep
the pledge they make to come into our homes
and shine. Our chattels, may they bless us.
But the house of night has many rooms,
and many other kinds of solace.
What are ghosts but roads not taken,
selves that never made the flesh,
bled through from dimensions
too close and too subtle for our sense.
I lie awake and count missed chances one by one.
What gives the real such precedence?
Without strong shades, hard lines, it has
no edge over the undone, all the absence.
PORTRAIT OF A SKULL
The skull beneath the skin is sick
of leaching through the sallow cheeks
and sockets of lost children or old drunks.
What about, it pleads, my effortless
postpartum plate tectonics, unfurled
origami, grapefruit with a thumb-press pulse.
And what about its role as thought keeper,
guardian of memory, goldfish bowl
where words can feed and grow?
But no. It's all memento mori,
dental battlements and sordid stories
told by archaeologists about a life
of brutish, brief excess: impacts, contusions,
always with that gormless rictus grin.
So keep me under the skin or you'll be sorry.
DES CANYONS AUX ETOILES
For all we know the canyons and the stars
could be in love tonight, gazing at
each other for the first time, without fear.
Worlds apart, their act of love is delicate:
a pale simple glow on desert rocks,
the touch of shadow on a dying sun,
gentler than the love of moon for lakes,
which leaves its imprint on them as a burn.
For all we know the snakes and scorpions
that soak up canyon shade are twinned
with luminescent opposites above in
a long, slow dance on cooling sand.
Some nights it helps, to picture stars
seducing canyons as we lie out alone,
even though we know the dance must end.
DISCOVERERS
What vexed Vasco de Gama after weeks
of river giving onto river - Oscillano, Awdl, Baga -
name breaking onto name, tracing delta, tributary,
hacking through jungle and scrub to the source
of this great rush of water from which eels,
clean clothes and death are drawn each day;
what really wounded him was when he traced
it to a tap in the backyard of a bombed-out bar.
His heart broke as he paddled through the gutters
of this ghost metropolis. Picture Vasco:
boots bestriding flagstones cracked beneath
the tap which whistles as it spits.
He thinks there are two kinds of people:
One who would turn the tap off, the other wrench it full on.
So he took a drink, and knew which one he was.
I can't remember the last time I found such an exciting, sustained and even collection as 'Drysalter', winner of the 2014 Forward Prize. I found it in Ulverston Library after discovering Roberts in a recent number of the 'London Review of Books'.
Going through a volume I always make a note of the poems I particularly like but I have clocked fifteen already and I am only half way through the book.
There is something plain wilful about public libraries: it just doesn't make any economic sense in today's global system that an old geezer on his way to the bus stop in the rain with a bagful of shopping can simply walk into a building and walk off it with a treasure like this - scot free!
There's a loophole somewhere. You can't have austerity and free poetry.
It is heartening that there is still evidence of an public spirit - a commitment to the common good: I must take it back after I have filleted it with a Stanley knife.
I will force myself to select just four poems as a taster, each of which would make a great post on its own.
NIGHT FREIGHT
Our goods - in transit while we sleep-
are boxed to ride the rail-tracks, oceans,
new roads cut by truck-lights, all to keep
the pledge they make to come into our homes
and shine. Our chattels, may they bless us.
But the house of night has many rooms,
and many other kinds of solace.
What are ghosts but roads not taken,
selves that never made the flesh,
bled through from dimensions
too close and too subtle for our sense.
I lie awake and count missed chances one by one.
What gives the real such precedence?
Without strong shades, hard lines, it has
no edge over the undone, all the absence.
PORTRAIT OF A SKULL
The skull beneath the skin is sick
of leaching through the sallow cheeks
and sockets of lost children or old drunks.
What about, it pleads, my effortless
postpartum plate tectonics, unfurled
origami, grapefruit with a thumb-press pulse.
And what about its role as thought keeper,
guardian of memory, goldfish bowl
where words can feed and grow?
But no. It's all memento mori,
dental battlements and sordid stories
told by archaeologists about a life
of brutish, brief excess: impacts, contusions,
always with that gormless rictus grin.
So keep me under the skin or you'll be sorry.
DES CANYONS AUX ETOILES
For all we know the canyons and the stars
could be in love tonight, gazing at
each other for the first time, without fear.
Worlds apart, their act of love is delicate:
a pale simple glow on desert rocks,
the touch of shadow on a dying sun,
gentler than the love of moon for lakes,
which leaves its imprint on them as a burn.
For all we know the snakes and scorpions
that soak up canyon shade are twinned
with luminescent opposites above in
a long, slow dance on cooling sand.
Some nights it helps, to picture stars
seducing canyons as we lie out alone,
even though we know the dance must end.
DISCOVERERS
What vexed Vasco de Gama after weeks
of river giving onto river - Oscillano, Awdl, Baga -
name breaking onto name, tracing delta, tributary,
hacking through jungle and scrub to the source
of this great rush of water from which eels,
clean clothes and death are drawn each day;
what really wounded him was when he traced
it to a tap in the backyard of a bombed-out bar.
His heart broke as he paddled through the gutters
of this ghost metropolis. Picture Vasco:
boots bestriding flagstones cracked beneath
the tap which whistles as it spits.
He thinks there are two kinds of people:
One who would turn the tap off, the other wrench it full on.
So he took a drink, and knew which one he was.
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