Suddenly the rain is hilarious.
The moon wobbled in the dusk.
What a laugh. Unseen frogs
belch in the damp grass.
The strange perfumes of darkening trees.
Cheap red wine
and the whole world a mouth.
Give me a double, a kiss.
WORDS, WIDE NIGHT - CAROL ANN DUFFY
Somewhere on the other side of this wide night and the distance
between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.
This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say it is sad?
In one of the tenses I am singing an impossible
song of desire that you cannot hear.
La la la la. See? I close my eyes and imagine
the dark hills I would have to cross to reach you,
For I am in love with you
and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.
so, i just got accepted to do an MA in Creative Writing at uni following my degree, super super excited. feel like a grown up writer…almost. the thought of being a post-grad student also scares the hell out of me though. i have wanted to do this for so long, and it is finally happening - never thought i would actually get onto the course, still feel like a writing novice! the thought of writing over 40,000 words next year and getting published makes me get butterflies in my tummy, but i am so excited.
I want you and you are not here. I pause
in this garden, breathing the colour thought is
before language into still air. Even your name
is a pale ghost and, though I exhale it again
and again, it will not stay with me. Tonight
I make you up, imagine you, your movements clearer
than the words I have you say you said before.
Wherever you are now, inside my head you fix me
with a look, standing here whilst cool late light
dissolves into the earth. I have got your mouth wrong,
but still it smiles. I hold you closer, miles away,
inventing love, until the calls of nightjars
interrupt and turn what was to come, was certain,
into memory. The stars are filming us for no one.
Today I am going to kill something. Anything.
I have had enough of being ignored and today
I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,
a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets.
I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.
We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in
another language and now the fly is in another language.
I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.
I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half
the chance. But today I am going to change the world.
Something’s world. The cat avoids me. The cat
knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.
I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.
I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.
Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town
for signing on. They don’t appreciate my autograph.
There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio
and tell the man he’s talking to a superstar.
He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.
The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.
I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid streams in your china cup.
Or when you’re away, or at work,
I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,
as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.
I like the questions – sugar? – milk? –
and the answers I don’t know by heart, yet,
for I see your soul in your eyes, and I forget.
Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon,
I love tea’s names. Which tea would you like? I say
but it’s any tea for you, please, any time of day,
as the women harvest the slopes
for the sweetest leaves, on Mount Wu-Yi,
and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea.
“I saw the dreamer in her
Had fallen in love with me
and she did not know it.
That moment the dreamer in me
Fell in love with her, and I knew it.”
| — | Sylvia Plath |
