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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781847776655 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Carcanet Press, Limited |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 72 |
| File size: | 272 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Rooster
By Gerry McGrath
Carcanet Press Ltd
Copyright © 2012 Gerry McGrathAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84777-665-5
CHAPTER 1
I am seeking a statue
Drowned in my youth
Zbigniew Herbert
Intimate Expanses
Expecting little to come
from the tired liturgy
of dreams
he tugged gently at the quilt
and kissed an ear
tasting on his lips while
she lay sleeping
an intimate expanse of skin.
Snow
He looked out.
Snow was falling
with a certain pride
and fur-thick
like dead letters returning
without courtesy or love
from an eternal lamentable
office of shadows.
White Sail
5 a.m.
Lying awake
I reach for you
sleeping
touch
the white sail
of your skin.
The Opposite of Goodbye
Listen to the wife
of the expert in elegies
as she delivers
this from her husband
Walk
Dream
Love
(as she reads)
Friends
my happiness is nothing
without you
Only Light
Stay there while I go out
itchy with the stars
to feel blind for the inkwell
I know but I don't know
what every night allows me
why every day brings only light
The Telling
The big square light and the smaller
rectangular light they see
through the steamed-up kitchen
window.
Not long now.
Cauliflower's taking a fork.
Turnip chips need just
a few minutes more in the oven.
The cheese sauce in a pot
bubbles occasionally
on the back of the hob.
Tonight he'll tell his wife
the story of a young girl
working up to telling her father
that he is going to be a grandfather
and him replying
aye daughter
I feel like a grandfather.
St Petersburg
They drink tea
in St Petersburg
remembering conversations
about truth
and if not truth
the desire for truth
and if not desire
Element
The sea –
a sweet, blue history
of the Earth.
Gravity –
the soil's otherness,
pulse of the crowd felt
in an empty room.
The Beach at Irvine
The seal disdains the rocks
to follow the express
lift shaft
down.
Up-periscopes
when it hears the fanfare
of the stage designers arriving
from olive-green dreams.
The Photographer
We see things
you and I –
orange beech leaves
hills
the skin of a pool
a lighthouse beam
of frost
Pale Cup
A blue light
you breathing the impossible
flowers under snow.
* * *
Rain crossed the glass.
Light bloomed
in the pale cup of the room.
Sadness was banished
by the briefest gift
of words.
No Maybes About It
For Pedro Lenz
He was sure
he'd seen it
or heard it
or both
:
poetry should be
the linguistic equivalent
of lemon juice
–
aye and no
You Are
Peel me away You are
my love
my not-death
emptiness cupped
between the light heart
the starry bone
You are whispers
where the facts cry out
and silence reigns.
Lightning
Everything I wanted to say
to the hard-hearted women
the forsaken children.
How much dearer to them
in a sea-green afternoon
the memory of a morning
made giddy by the lightning
speed of the past.
Changed Days
Outside, on the pavement, a cool breeze
administered its soothing balm.
Inside, a decayed tooth had been salved
by the expeditionary skill of a dentist
who never claimed the subtlety of the tongue
which, hours later, all numbness gone,
began the process of mapping this familiar
unfamiliar terrain.
The Guests
The conduit for laughter.
The conduit for eternal laughter.
Swallows flit in and out
through the dark-eyed ruin.
When evening puts out the light
the skin of the earth remains
lighter than air.
I have to tell you:
there's been no word
of tomorrow.
But at least I can tell you,
I who have been so long away,
you who are only just arriving.
Summer's End
is a hill
bleared by rain
a first trembling
wind
the memory
that into autumn's room
winter will dip a glass
hold up darkness
to a chittering lantern
moon.
First
The consensus is you are reading
or were that day
the camera snapped you
in your half-world, a mothy flicker
evoking open-mouthed wonder in ours.
Whisper it through the walls, wee yin,
we have forgotten
the secrets heard
when gravity first pulls
on the silvery shadow.
Blue Box
Ancestors, what did you find out?
Life's short. Nothing can be added
or taken away.
Joy isn't just hope without the dog-hair
of despair.
Adjectives always ride piggyback.
We know you're there because we feel you,
Ghosts' bones.
Ten thousand years ago the sky was
a blue box above your head,
the moon was the socket for an eye,
the stars faded quicker than the dying light
that grows.
Open Wide
Dark winds buffet the house.
The air is wet as stone.
I am tired of forever.
Slowly daylight grows,
sweet calm awaits.
I throw my arms open wide.
Morning is here.
Kisses
She asked me to do two things before leaving.
One was write a letter. Then she kissed me.
In town, I slipped her letter into the post box, heard it fall.
Across the street a man had stopped with his dog.
Everywhere people were running from the rain.
Loose Ends
For Czeslaw Milosz
I read a short poem
that takes some forgiving.
He is gone now.
My father drifts to mind
grey face leaking hope
that all the loose ends
will be gathered in.
Wheat
I want you to listen, to think of a field
yellow with wheat.
Please, cast no aspersions, envy no one,
remember nothing, not even yourself.
Magic
He spent years thinking
how he wished never to see
the word on the page
hear its opposing voice
nor think of the space it is given.
Then suddenly Yes's Opposite
conjuring all manner of things
as if by magic a future.
He Says
They sit in the dry reservoir
of their front room.
She laughs, cries, whispers.
Memory is everything.
How can I tell you I love you?
Somewhere it is raining.
In Itself
Who needs the genius of diffident earth,
the inborn rhythm of toppled coins.
I am closer to you than a pen to paper,
an itch to skin. Love is unthinkable.
Age, an insufficiency in itself.
La Stanza Rossa
Red is the room
brown the chair
blue the vase
green the tree
that burns
Born
With the announcement
of the death of irony
a strange new world is born.
Doors toll on their hinges.
Shadows dark as eyelashes
silence the wild flowers.
Trees stick two fingers up
at the blue-bottomed boat.
Beside a cricket pitch
a conference of crows is helpless
with laughter.
Fragment (of a Chorale)BLD
For David Kinloch
Darkness
Plump as a pigeon
Daybreak
Deft, putty-white
Urgency
In a dew drop
Eldest
On the days that time sleeps
she dreams of last kisses.
Terrible things will die with me
He listens, then takes his leave
beating his wings like a bird.
Blue
Try to love
live your life
as if dreaming
believing truth
is nothing if not
forgettable.
Tonight the air is blue
under rain.
Roses
This heart lacking
no pain
or human statistic
carries roses
to the far corners of a rock
tilted at the sun.
Two Words
Like a look, like a light, they come
arrows in the blood fleeing a fire.
You could say the waterfall began the day
death in something like his father's jacket,
smiling that tender, angular smile, stepped
off the bus and walked to the foot of the road.
Report from a West Highland Funeral
Last Saturday at three o'clock in the afternoon
adrenalin with a clatter of hooves
burst from the walls of the piss-poor hotel lounge.
Slave to reason
I remained in my seat.
I Hope
Poetry – heart's vice!
Your future lies
where lyric and environmental
concerns are intimates.
In my son's blue gaze
a terrible clarity confers grace
while honesty like a vulture
circles overhead.
I hope
no man finds this verse lethal.
You Were
This Friday afternoon
after the coffee I didn't want
I decide
I've had enough of playing daddy
to your wide-eyed baby boy.
One day
time will uproot itself
shake the dirt from its shoes
show us the cuts on its hands
its legs
say to us, father and son
you were more beautiful
when you didn't know you were.
Tell Me
what you want
from me
with these few words
this cool approximation
of honey
after a long hard century
of doubt.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Rooster by Gerry McGrath. Copyright © 2012 Gerry McGrath. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Dedication,
I,
Intimate Expanses,
Snow,
White Sail,
The Opposite of Goodbye,
Only Light,
The Telling,
St Petersburg,
Element,
The Beach at Irvine,
The Photographer,
Pale Cup,
No Maybes About It,
You Are,
Lightning,
Changed Days,
The Guests,
Summer's End,
First,
Blue Box,
Open Wide,
Kisses,
Loose Ends,
Wheat,
Magic,
He Says,
In Itself,
La Stanza Rossa,
Born,
Fragment (of a Chorale),
Eldest,
Blue,
Roses,
Two Words,
Report from a West Highland Funeral,
I Hope,
You Were,
Tell Me,
Ask,
Ask,
Standing,
Script,
Zero,
Steps,
Moon,
II,
Goat Fell,
Audience of One,
Imperfect,
Suite No. 1,
III,
Wave,
A Man of Good Fortune,
The Morning of Forgetfulness,
Dutch Interiors,
Faith,
IV,
Return to the City,
Foreign Travel,
Rooster,
Suite No. 2,
I - VIII,
V,
West Coast Colloquy,
American Bestiary,
Horse Feathers,
Purple,
About the Author,
Also by Gerry McGrath from Carcanet Press,
Copyright,