from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Tuesday 14 February 2012

no language at all


The Next Revolution

How we long to overthrow
ourselves, transgress boundaries,
borders, races, states

how we long for a language
that is no language at all
but cadences in the tongue

of sparrow, sea, shell, silence –
here, now, trying to make words
sing like birds or violins

like without speaking; and
all the time beyond the window
the snowdrops and catkins doing their thing






from All the Missing Names of Love; Roselle Angwin, IDP April 2012

2 comments:

  1. Words can sing like birds, or violins, in several ways.
    There is a story of a 'singing pen', the sound that the dip pen made when scripture was being revealed by Baha'u'llah, Persian prophet-founder of the Baha'i Faith; as if the words held joy, and sang when meeting the paper, making the divine visible.
    And, of course a voice can croon and warble like a bird or violin, if there is a gift for it. Most of us screech, literally or metaphorically.
    Your posts are small treasures, Roselle.
    Margaret Lambert

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  2. Margaret, thank you. This is lovely: 'as if the words held joy, and sang when meeting the paper, making the divine visible'... :-)

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