from Entries: Exits (2019)
2.
A tingling drone, a melancholy
tinnitus, behind the troubadour voice
(Bernart de Ventadorn, Pois preyatz me,
Senhor) in its rise, curl and fall – a
ground, but high in the air: an altitude
like Gothic arches: after-quiver like
an afterlife: where voice persists,
beyond us, as it dies down here.
It dies. Dies down. Down here.
11.
We are the broken music. If we were
not, there would be no word for
"music", and no need to have one
since there'd be no breath of us not
in tune with world around us, or each other.
There might be a sign, though, song sans
words or tune, an edgy timbre, for the thing
we are, all astrew on the beach,
in the street, in these thoughts, all astray.
18.
Not to be hopeless, nor yet to be home
and dried-out from the storm of history:
the point of balance – dare I say, of grace?
The dip, swerve, trip-step of a klezmer
clarinet treads the line between whooping
and weeping: wedding music for the match
made between past and present – mute
dark versts around them. Now, the small
glass crunched beneath their feet. Now, dance!
21.
The bitters: that fond wincing on the tongue
we hate and crave. Its lingering through time.
The palate cleansed, the rich tastes cut:
in any lunch box snack, the heimisch gherkin.
Bitter herbs on the Passover plate. Nobody
owns this. The sound of ululation rising over,
threading borders, does not need translation.
Preserve our precious bitters, yes, but keep them
for the music, for the table all the world can share.
26.
Don’t show me the words: the sea surge
of that Hebridean psalm, the hawser
of the line cast out, taking the strain
of two, three, all the heavy congregation;
dust raised from the Sahara prickling the eyes
in Sardinian plaints; the joik that is a bare
voice-silhouette against the Arctic night...
Word-clad, they huddle at the wire of borders
with their bundles of grief. Let them fly.
Philip Gross has published twenty poetry collections, including four for children, and won many of the major awards in British poetry, from the National Poetry Competition to the T.S. Eliot Prize. His latest book, The Thirteenth Angel, was published by Bloodaxe in 2022.
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