Speechless At Inch E-Book

James Caruth

• Herausgeber: The Poetry Business
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 41

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

This substantial collection by James Caruth brings together remarkable new work along with several key poems from previous pamphlets. Speechless at Inch is a varied but coherent collection by a distinctive writer at the height of his powers.

Leseprobe

Speechless at Inch

Published 2021 by The Poetry Business

Campo House,

54 Campo Lane,

Sheffield S1 2EG

www.poetrybusiness.co.uk

Copyright © James Caruth 2021

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

ISBN 978-1-912196-87-6

eBook ISBN 978-1-912196-88-3

All rights reserved.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Designed & typeset by The Poetry Business.

Printed by Imprint Digital.

Cover Image: Janet Mullarney, The Straight and Narrow, 1991, Painted wood, 228 x 320 x 137 cm, Collection Irish Museum of Modern Art, Purchase, 1992

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Smith|Doorstop is a member of Inpress

www.inpressbooks.co.uk.

Distributed by NBN International, 1 Deltic Avenue,

Rooksley, Milton Keynes MK13 8LD.

The Poetry Business gratefully acknowledges the support of Arts Council England.

Contents

The Bangor Blackbird

North

February is Over

Note

Three Little Birds

Pigeon Lofts, Penistone Road

Rare & Racy

A Harvest of Stones

The Old Faiths

Listen

Grave Goods

The Irish Yew at Cromford

Beatitudes

Stoop

Above Redmires

Apostle

Eight Days

The Christmas Rhymers

From the Chinese

The Art of Distance

Marking the Lambs

Considering Grief

Snow

The House

A First Glimpse of Snow

Once More

Found Poem

Rain

Dublin Beat

This Poem

Constance Markievicz at Stephen’s Green

Tunes Played on a Penny Whistle

Six Degrees

Lissadell

Glendalough

Gallarus

Speechless at Inch

Son

I am Invisible in the Dark

Love Lines

The Photograph

All Roads Lead Home

The Temple Jar

Bewleys

The Seagram Murals

There are Many Ways to Hypnotise a Chicken

Resolution

Snapshot

from Dark Peak

Creed

Offertory

Pater Noster

Lagán

Belfast

The Deposition

Milltown Sequence

Coast Road, North Antrim

Dinner with Sharon Olds

A Step Away

Tranquil

Recurring

The Old Austerities

Dreams of Donegal

The Down Shore

The Demesne

Bangor

New Year

The Last

New Year in Arras

In memory of Steve and Matthew

The Bangor Blackbird

after 9th century Irish

A desolate song rings over the Lough:

a blackbird in a hawthorn bush,

unsettled in the gloom of leaves, sings

a gilded lament to an empty nest.

North

A day when the earth seemed

out of kilter, when the wind

came at us from some neglected corner

as we pointed the old Ford

resolutely into the north,

windows down, swallowing

the scent of rain on ploughed fields,

looking out over reed-beds

as a heron, almost perfect,

rose up from the rushes.

Geese wintered on the mud-flats,

brent, greylag, pink-foot,

gorging on sea aster below a sky

like the inside of a shell,

feeding in the shallows

before the journey home.

All of us pulled to a single star.

February is Over

after Frank O’Hara

February is over

but a taste of ice remains on the air

like a tarnished spoon.

I lift my face to a corner of the garden

where the sun might be.

You’re at my ear, saying –

We cannot touch.

Look there, the cherry tree

coming into bloom,

a breeze worrying that branch

where a small bird preens,

ready for flight.

We must not touch.

Winter has eased, a scratch of blue

along the horizon, the day receding

as the dog stirs under the weathered bench.

It’s chasing rabbits over wide open fields.

We cannot touch.

February is over.

I think of you alone in a room,

the glory of twelve white roses.

Note

The music must always play.

– W H Auden

The TV above the bar’s on mute

but the rolling-news declares

democracy’s under siege.

Footage of the citadel,

barbarians stalking the hallways.

Along the bar a radio plays ‘Slow Dance’.

I’m mellow, sipping espresso

in a mid-town dive, trying to make it last

as I write a line on the back of an envelope

and ’Trane wanders off on a blue note.

On the TV the Capitol’s marble dome

shines on the Washington skyline.

Here, rain is falling on 52nd St

and I think – Sometimes that moment comes

when we realise that where we are

is where we want to be.

Caught on that note ’Trane holds

like it’s the last sound we’ll ever hear.

Three Little Birds

Bob Marley seeps over the fence

as sunlight slants across next-door’s lawn

where three sparrows shake their wings

at the edge of a pond, bathing in clouds.

Rain has ceased, pearls strung on a spider’s web,

honeysuckle drips, the last roses curl and spill

rusted petals over the untended beds.

A woman stands washing dishes in a sink,

her wrists sunk in a lather of suds.

She looks out at the garden’s slow demise.

This is a time for shedding, stripping back,

to trust a pulse faint and deep.