Short Days, Long Shadows E-Book

Sheenagh Pugh

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 42

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

In this, her twelfth collection, noted poet Sheenagh Pugh steps into a new, northern landscape, the Shetland Islands, with poems steeped in the wilder weathers and views of rugged coastlines, sweeping sea-vistas and the hardy historical characters who have inhabited these lands. A lovely pared-down spareness and an elegaic quality informing this new work. The author's characteristic dry humour is also present; she is a poet who considers 'too accessible' to be the best sort of compliment. Sheenagh Pugh's work has as much to offer the general reader as it does the specialist, who will admire her artful use of traditional forms.

Leseprobe

Short Days, Long Shadows

Sheenagh Pugh

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend,Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

facebook.com/SerenBooks

Twitter:@SerenBooks

The right of Sheenagh Pugh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Sheenagh Pugh 2014

ISBN: 978-1-78172-156-8

e-book: 978-1-78172-157-5

Kindle: 978-1-78172-158-2

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

Author’s website: http://sheenagh.webs.com/

Cover photograph by Michael Burns

Printed in Bembo by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

Contents

Extremophile

Come and Go

Staying

Walker

1. Walker

2. His Colours

3. Gardening

4. Him Again

5. The Edges

Days of November

Walsingham’s Men

1. Player-Man

2. The Royal Purveyor of Poultry

3. Decoder

Terra Nova

Travelling with Ashes

Medals

1. Pacific Star (India)

2. Africa Star (Egypt)

3. Atlantic Star (Norway)

4. Russian Convoys (North Cape)

Uniform

Wedding Night in the Snow Hotel

What He Saw,Vesteralen

Pomor

Trondheim: January

Fogbound

Big Sky

Living in a Snow Globe

Gannet

Sea’s Answer

Dresden Shepherdesses of 1908

Blue

The Viceroy of India

Tea with Skuas

The Madonna of the Rocks

Hecklers

Three Poems from Unst at Midsummer

1. Treasure Island

2. Spendthrift

3. Not

The Sound of a Diamond Planet

Wasting Time

The Eye

The USDAW Mural, Cardiff

Cardiff: January

Ghosts of Cardiff

Capybara Moments

Later

Catching Up

Different Corridors

Skeleton

The Vanishing Bishop

The Sailor Who Fell from the Rigging

Footnote

A Good Sunrise

The Talents

The Door Open

Naglfar

Strauss

Letter to Dr Johnson

How to Leave

Return

Acknowledgements

Extremophile

Two miles below the light, bacteria

live without sun, thrive on sulphur

in a cave of radioactive rock,

and, blind in the night of the ocean floor,

molluscs that feed only on wood

wait for wrecks.White tubeworms heap

in snowdrifts around hydrothermal vents,

at home in scalding heat. Lichens encroach

on Antarctic valleys where no rain

ever fell. There is nowhere

life cannot take hold, nowhere so salt,

so cold, so acid, but some chancer

will be there, flourishing on bare stone,

getting by, gleaning a sparse living

from marine snow, scavenging

light from translucent quartz, as if

lack and hardship could do nothing

but quicken it, this urge

to cling on in the cracks

of the world, or as if this world

itself, so various, so not to be spared

as it is, were the impetus

never to leave it.

Come and Go

He has chosen, far nearer the end

than the beginning, to live

where, every day, he can watch the land

come and go, each time gleaming as if

it were new made. Sandbars shoulder

into the sun, their whereabouts too brief

to map, never drying out. Under

its pulsing skin the sea echoes

sunlight, shadows the clouds, goes undercover

in mist. What it is to be bodiless,

boneless, to reshape, to fill

with yourself the moulds of coves and bays,

take yourself back. He walks mile

after mile, blanking aches, stays up late

in the blue half-light, resists the pull

of sleep while he can, while his sight

still serves him, before that jerry-build,

his body, can no longer house a spirit

still nowhere near done with the world.

Staying

The ground beneath our feet

is shifting, has been on the move

for ever. This fissured sea-cliff

travelled north from the equator;

its heights were once an ocean floor.

Ice carves out rock, forests harden

to diamond as the stars burn down:

there is nothing that is not on a journey,

no abode for those who long only

to stay.We could be at ease

with so little, if it were for always:

a moment, a loved place. How modest

this aim to go nowhere, this least

of wishes, not to change our state.

Walker

1.

He is coming from the shore meadow

where oystercatchers landed today;

they are pairing, nesting, and he

moves like the shadow of a gull

across the grass, over a grey wall

laced with green, honeysuckle buds

gleaming. He steps between the blades

of daffodils. The woman never sees,

firming plants in her garden, as he passes

her by, slips in at the door open

to let sun and air in on her man,

getting some rest, seeing his flowers unfold,

watching the resurrection of the world

while he waits for his next bout of chemo.

2. His Colours

He sports the jester’s coat,

red and yellow;

he is all in a glow

of falling leaves, bonfires

that throw out splinters

of light. His feet crush

berries into a blood-splash

on the paving-stones.

His colours: slanting suns,

clouds briefly ablaze,

he comes as a surprise,

this flaunting dandy

whom we had looked to see

in a plain black suit.

3. Gardening