Tides: Stasis Betrayed
History dreams. Misplaced urges. Just as you think you can grasp a kernel the poem moves on in a kind of eddying reflective of the wanderings of thought and and its return to wander more. I quote at length the opening section of one set...
The Shape of ThingsEdward Carson. from Taking Shape.
i
The idle days of autumn close. The planet moves itself
to a place where the thought of everything resides.
This is a place where history lies on its back and dreams.
This is a place where nature has misplaced its urge
to compose itself. The leaves tremble with the shifting earth.
The cooling wind turns itself inside and out.
We lie here beside the open window and wonder what
on earth can keep us from each other. Our sex is a shape
that finds itself taking the shape of the other. In coming
together there is no shape of things to keep in mind,
as if we knew the difference between this way and that.
First comes the hot invention of love, and then the silky stroke
of your bedclothes against me. There is the urgent need to make
sense of our inarticulate breath, our cold sweat, our absent fears.
What makes shape around us is a reflection of words, an island
of knowing one silence, pressed up, hard, agains another.
I like the skillful enjambement. Everything seems suspended for a moment before rushing on: urge / to compose ; coming / together there ; island / of knowing.
And so for day 2196
17.12.2012
