Tuesday poem #704 : David Herd : I was Saying to You about the Darkness

 

 

i.

I was saying to you
About the darkness
Of this January morning
The year’s refusal
Becoming light
These threads we weave
As if we might assemble
A moment
Gather stories
Say time 

I was saying as if
We might practice
A painter’s patience
Press against the canvas
With a palette knife
Colour becoming shape
As if perhaps
A couple of people
Gestures almost
Might get the syntax right 

As if as we say
As we watch the buildings opposite
All those people after people
Who return home
January gradually
Comes into focus
Words spoken
No tone. 

ii.

I wake to tell you
This is a January morning
Waiting for you to say so
In your own voice
You mention
I want to say the light
But for you
You hear a bell chime
Weighted against the city
You say to me not
Unanswered 

As a pattern
You want to say a riff
As if we might place time
Assemble some kind of rhythm
As we walk the streets
Holding as we go
These fragments of a conversation
This lifetime’s talking
These days lived 

This dream
I told you I keep having
That we are speaking in the present
And it is the moment
In the sequence of variations
The theme comes back
Holding after the note
And you and I are both listening
And the tempo arrests us
And time
Gives.
 

iii.

February and I want to say
The buildings have their winter yellow
As the dumpsters are collected
By the dumpster truck
Yellow becoming grey
As the palette is gradually perfected
This temporality as snowdrops
And then perhaps narcissi
Emerge 

And promise
I want to say the earth
Or at least perhaps the earth’s
Sequence
This tense we occupy
In the middle of our belongings
As grey turns mauve
As February shows its hand
Surprisingly non-judgemental
Our actions in part behind us
Only this disposition
To prove 

As if it might be said
We step into a February morning
And the light across the botanic gardens
Holds good
Nobody forced out
As if we had the capacity to say so
Galanthus in evidence
Evidence
Love

 

 

David Herd [photo credit: Sarah Hickson] is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose. His most recent collection, Walk Song (2022), was a Book of the Year in the Australian Book Review and his forthcoming collection, As If It Was Possible This Morning, will be published by Shearsman later this year. He has given readings in Europe, North America, India and Australia, and has held fellowships at George Mason University, Simon Fraser University and the Writing Center, Gloucester, Massachusetts. His critical history, Writing Against Expulsion in the Post-war World: Making Space for the Human was shortlisted for the 2024 MSA Book Prize. He is Professor of Literature and Human Rights at the University of St Andrews and co-organiser of the project Refugee Tales.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan