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

Saturday 10 May 2014

pilgrimage (a poem)


On the first day
we come jostling as sheep herded and penned
not really here but not there either –
the displaced ones.

On the second day
making a new home in these sea-meadows
all our suns break through to meet the high one –
everything gilded, true.

On the third day
our fears come back and tarnish, just a little, the gold.
We want to stand apart, perhaps to hide;
it’s hard to be seen in our real faces, naked.

On the fourth day
the wave has spent itself on the white shell-sand shore.
Now we can meet the eyes that seek our own,
rest in a deeper knowing.

On day five
We bring our harvest to this our companionable table –
empty our pockets to the bare cloth, break
ourselves to share.

On day six
We leave with what we came for, whether or not we know it;
scoured by light and truth we have tasted the word; it is good.
We have made of ourselves a flame.



© Roselle Angwin, Iona April 2014

5 comments:

  1. Beautifully put, Roselle. It is just how it was and coming home here to Worcestershire it's so valuable to revisit the words I scribbled and have now undergone a similar sort of transformation (I hope) with your encouragement. (D'you need a copy of what I've sent to B? I normally send one but you might be inundated?) Now I'm back to the novel – not easy after being so far away from it the two weeks before and during Iona. It seems full of torment at the moment – it is – and still a long way from the planned redemptive resolution. Ah well, courage, I say, knowing you'll say it too. Please keep writing these lovely, truthful gems and I'll keep trying too.
    Miriam xx
    PS On Iona you read a wonderful poem about Nothing. Who wrote it? I'd love to read it again and I think J might like it.

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  2. Thanks, M. And that's a deal! Nowt wrong with torment - we have to learn to surf if - and I look forward to reading the results of your struggles with it in your next mentoring batch.

    I've just read a novel by colleague of my daughter's at Plymouth: set in parts of Dartmoor that I know very well it's a strong dark portrayal of a kind of torment: you might enjoy (never sure whether 'enjoy' is the right verb here?!) it too: 'What Lies Within', Tom Vowler.

    The Nothing poem was 'That Would Really Be Something', by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, about whom I know nothing(!), in an anthology called 'Poems of Awakening'. It's an uneven collection in that, although I'm so in the stream of counterculture consciousness myself, I do have difficulties with some of the more New Age aspects of it. But on the whole it's a very good anthology.

    Yes, 'Courage'! Nothing worth doing is easy.

    Rx

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  3. M: can't edit that for some reason. The second sentence should have an 'it' where's an 'if'...

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  4. Thanks, Roselle – the deal is done!
    Thanks also for the book and poem; and I have here something for you from yesterday's Guardian Review, though you might have seen it already: Blake Morrison on The Moor:Lives, Landscape, Literature by William Atkins.
    Last week I mentioned Jim Crace's Harvest and you said you might try it. I'm loving it, but that means nothing. Still – I can see you enjoying it. And yes, I know what you mean about 'enjoy' and I agree with you about having to learn to surf torment. It's life, it's real and without it we have no chance of learning empathy, don't you think?
    Mx

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  5. As usual, Miriam, I agree with you! Yes. And thanks for the alert - didn't get out to buy a paper copy yesterday and, unlike Chris, I hate reading the Guardian online; but will, for that review. Sounds perfect. Haven't got round to ordering the Crace yet, or going into local bookshop; thanks for reminder. Have, though, begun writing that Iona book!

    Rx

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