The Weather Wheel E-Book

Mimi Khalvati

• Herausgeber: Carcanet Poetry
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

In this, her boldest collection to date, Mimi Khalvati takes the weather, the seasons and the passage of night and day as the ground on which she draws her emblems of human life and love. Restricting herself in each poem to sixteen lines, set in couplets, Khalvati plays kaleidoscopic variations on this form, the lyric falling differently each time, yet the book as a whole retaining a powerful coherence. As the scene shifts from London to the Mediterranean to the Canaries, the poems gain resonance from each other with cumulative intensity, spinning connections across scale and distance. The Weather Wheel is a radiant celebration of the living world despite the loss that lies at the book's heart.

Leseprobe

MIMI KHALVATI

The Weather Wheel

Acknowledgements

Grateful thanks are due to the editors of the following publications in which some of these poems, or earlier versions of them, have appeared:

Acumen, Ariadne’s Thread, Artemis, Cimarron Review (USA), Genius Floored: Alphabet of Days (Soaring Penguin Press, 2012), Genius Floored: Uncurtained Window (Soaring Penguin Press, 2013), Her Wings of Glass (Second Light Publications, 2014), London Magazine, Magma, New Humanist, Not Only the Dark (Categorical Books, 2011), PN Review, POEM, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art (www.taosjournalofpoetry.com), The Book of Love and Loss (Belgrave Press, Bath, 2014), The Critical Muslim, The Editor: An Anthology for Patricia Oxley (Rockingham Press, 2011), The Forward Book of Poetry 2013, The Long Poem Magazine, The North, The Rialto, Tokens for the Foundlings (Seren, 2012), Urthona.

‘Model for a Timeless Garden’ was commissioned by the Southbank Centre and written in response to Olafur Eliasson’s eponymous light installation exhibited at the Light Show, Hayward Gallery, 2013.

‘Ghazal: In Silence’ appeared on the Academy of American Poets’ website, Poem-a-Day.

Warm thanks to Peter and Ann Sansom for publishing Earthshine (Smith/Doorstop Books, 2013), a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. All the pamphlet poems are reproduced here.

I would also like to thank Martin Parker at Silbercow for designing the cover image, Alfred Corn, Jane Duran, Marilyn Hacker and Aamer Hussein for their generosity in reading and responding to the manuscript, and, in particular, Michael Schmidt and Helen Tookey for their invaluable editing.

Contents

Title PageAcknowledgementsI EarthshineHouse MouseMadame Berthe’s Mouse LemurSun SparrowKnifefishSnailSciurus CarolinensisThe ConservatoryThe Little GlosterMicrochiropteraThe Landing StageEarthshinePrunus AviumII Under the VineUnder the VineStarlightAngelsOrchardWhat it WasMarrakesh IMarrakesh IIMarrakesh IIIMarrakesh IVMarrakesh VMarrakesh VILe Café MarocainIII The Soul Travels on HorsebackNew Year’s EveThe Pear TreeRain StoriesAunt MoonStatham Grove SurgeryThe WardrobeFogSnow isThe BlanketThe SwarmModel for a Timeless GardenThe Soul Travels on HorsebackIV TearsThe OvermindReading the Saturday GuardianMidsummer SolsticePicking Raspberries with MowgliSniffDrawing BeaNocturneThe WavesSimilesCherries and GrapesKusa-HibariTearsV Her AnniversaryThe GoatOn the Occasion of his 150th AnniversaryIn Search of the AnimalsMartina’s RadianceMehreganSun in the WindowBringing Down the StarsThe Cloud SarcophagusThe DoeAbney Park CemeteryMigrationHer AnniversaryVI The AvenueGranadilla de Abona IGranadilla de Abona IIGranadilla de Abona IIIGranadilla de Abona IVGranadilla de Abona VGranadilla de Abona VIGranadilla de Abona VIIPlaza de los RemediosThe WheelhouseFinca El TejadoThe AvenueGhazal: In SilenceNotesAbout the AuthorAlso by Mimi Khalvati from Carcanet PressCopyright

I Earthshine

House Mouse

Even the mist was daffodil yellow in the morning sun,

a slant of April sun that glowed on my banana skin.

And in the shadow of my arm a mouse lay, white belly up

like a lemur sunbathing. Begging she was, paws curled,

miniature paws like nail clippings, hind legs crossed

in a rather elegant fashion, tail a lollipop stick.

Pricked on her shadow, her ear and fur stood sharp as grass

but her real ear was soft, thin, pliable, faint as a sweetpea petal

and her shut eye a tiny arc like the hilum of a broad bean.

Yesterday she was plump. Today she’s thin. Sit her up, she’ll sit.

You can see how Lennie would have ‘broke’ his, petting it –

mine weighs no more than a hairball, nestling in my palm

as though it were wood pulp, crawlspace, a ‘wee-bit housie’

and she, the pup, the living thing. The baby look’s still on her.

And the depth of her sleep. I tuck her into the finger

of my banana skin – a ferryboat to carry her over the Styx.

Madame Berthe’s Mouse Lemur

We should have been lemurs, lowering our metabolism

to suit, going into torpor in the cool dry winter months

to save on water and energy. We too should have sailed

on a raft of matted leaves out of poor Africa, out to Madagascar

into a forest of mangrove and thorn scrub, feeding off gum,

honeydew larvae, bedding down in tree holes en famille.

The very smallest of us, the veriest Tom Thumb, the most

minute pygmy, tsitsidy, mausmaki, itsy bitsy portmanteau,

little living furry torch, eyes two headlamp luminaries, front

a bib of chamois, tip to tail – and mostly tail – barely as long

as the line I write in, despite illegal logging, slash and burn,

would survive longer than many folk, especially in captivity.

Only the barn owl, goshawk, to watch for in the dark – raptors

with their own big beauty. But Madame Berthe’s Mouse Lemur

is caught in the act – a chameleon clasped in her hands,

a geisha lowering her fan: the smallest primate on our planet.