#alice oswald
Text
The wind blows their ghosts to the ground
line (loosely a translation of iliad 6.146-9) from memorial by alice oswald, embroidered onto a ginkgo leaf i found on the ground
#desk lamp lighting because it is dark and i Would take a photo tomorrow but i am Sure it will shrivel overnight#and it's in red for iliad book 3 reasons :-)#oh embroidery as somewhere in between the ideas of historical memory as presence and historical memory as a series of puncture wounds#we're really in it now!!!!!!#like leaves who could write a history of leaves#trees instead of gravestones#embroidery#alice oswald#iliad#beeps
4K notes
·
View notes
Text
Full Moon
by Alice Oswald
Good God!
What did I dream last night?
I dreamt I was the moon.
I woke and found myself still asleep.
It was like this: my face misted up from inside
And I came and went at will through a little peephole.
I had no voice, no mouth, nothing to express my trouble,
except my shadows leaning downhill, not quite parallel.
Something needs to be said to describe my moonlight.
Almost frost but softer, almost ash but wholer.
Made almost of water, which has strictly speaking
No feature, but a kind of counter-light, call it insight.
Like in woods, when they jostle their hooded shapes,
Their heads congealed together, having murdered each other,
There are moon-beings, sound-beings, such as deer and half-deer
Passing through there, whose eyes can pierce through things.
I was like that: visible invisible visible invisible.
There's no material as variable as moonlight.
I was climbing, clinging to the underneath of my bones, thinking:
Good God! Who have I been last night?
150 notes
·
View notes
Text
"A Short Story of Falling" by Alice Oswald
It is the story of the falling rain
to turn into a leaf and fall again
it is the secret of a summer shower
to steal the light and hide it in a flower
and every flower a tiny tributary
that from the ground flows green and momentary
is one of water's wishes and this tale
hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail
if only I a passerby could pass
as clear as water through a plume of grass
to find the sunlight hidden at the tip
turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip
then I might know like water how to balance
the weight of hope against the light of patience
water which is so raw so earthy-strong
and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along
drawn under gravity towards my tongue
to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song
which is the story of the falling rain
that rises to the light and falls again
70 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Alice Oswald
54 notes
·
View notes
Text
—Alice Oswald
Oh the ghost of the heart…
69 notes
·
View notes
Text
The first to die was Protesilaus
A focused man who hurried to darkness
With forty black ships leaving the land behind
Men sailed with him from those flower-lit cliffs
- from Memorial, Alice Oswald
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
"
"What I love is one foot in front of another. South-south-west and down the contours. I go slipping between Black Ridge and White Horse Hill into a bowl of the moor where echoes can't get out
listen
a
lark
spinning
around
one
note
splitting
and
mending
it
and I find you in the reeds, a trickle coming out of a bark, a foal of a river..."
#closed polls#polls#poetry#poems#poetry polls#poets and writing#tumblr poetry#have you read this#dart#dart alice oswald#alice oswald
4 notes
·
View notes
Text
I notice the fatigue of flowers
weighed down by light
—Alice Oswald
67 notes
·
View notes
Text
and after a while a flower
singing out a faint line of scent
— Alice Oswald, from "A Short Story of Falling" in Falling Awake (Jonathan Cape, July 7, 2016) (via Thoughts)
5 notes
·
View notes
Text
Dunt: a poem for a dried up river
Alice Oswald
Very small and damaged and quite dry,
a Roman water nymph made of bone
tries to summon a river out of limestone
very eroded faded
her left arm missing and both legs from the knee down
a Roman water nymph made of bone
tries to summon a river out of limestone
exhausted utterly worn down
a Roman water nymph made of bone
being the last known speaker of her language
she tries to summon a river out of limestone
little distant sound of dry grass try again
a Roman water nymph made of bone
very endangered now
in a largely unintelligible monotone
she tries to summon a river out of limestone
little distant sound as of dry grass try again
exquisite bone figurine with upturned urn
in her passionate self-esteem she smiles looking sideways
she seemingly has no voice but a throat-clearing rustle
as of dry grass try again
she tries leaning
pouring pure outwardness out of a grey urn
little slithering sounds as of a rabbit man in full night-gear,
who lies so low in the rickety willowherb
that a fox trots out of the woods
and over his back and away try again
she tries leaning
pouring pure outwardness out of a grey urn
little lapping sounds yes
as of dry grass secretly drinking try again
little lapping sounds yes
as of dry grass secretly drinking try again
Roman bone figurine
year after year in a sealed glass case
having lost the hearing of her surroundings
she struggles to summon a river out of limestone
little shuffling sound as of approaching slippers
year after year in a sealed glass case
a Roman water nymph made of bone
she struggles to summon a river out of limestone
little shuffling sound as of a nearly dried-up woman
not really moving through the fields
having had the gleam taken out of her
to the point where she resembles twilight try again
little shuffling clicking
she opens the door of the church
little distant sounds of shut-away singing try again
little whispering fidgeting of a shut-away congregation
wondering who to pray to
little patter of eyes closing try again
very small and damaged and quite dry
a Roman water nymph made of bone
she pleads she pleads a river out of limestone
little hobbling tripping of a nearly dried-up river
not really moving through the fields,
having had the gleam taken out of it
to the point where it resembles twilight.
little grumbling shivering last-ditch attempt at a river
more nettles than water try again
very speechless very broken old woman
her left arm missing and both legs from the knee down
she tries to summon a river out of limestone
little stoved-in sucked thin
low-burning glint of stones
rough-sleeping and trembling and clinging to its rights
victim of Swindon
puddle midden
slum of over-greened foot-churn and pats
whose crayfish are cheap tool-kits
made of the mud stirred up when a stone's lifted
it's a pitiable likeness of clear running
struggling to keep up with what's already gone
the boat the wheel the sluice gate
the two otters larricking along go on
and they say oh they say
in the days of better rainfall
it would flood through five valleys
there'd be cows and milking stools
washed over the garden walls
and when it froze you could skate for five miles yes go on
little loose end shorthand unrepresented
beautiful disused route to the sea
fish path with nearly no fish in
#legally you must read. dunt: a poem for a dried up river by#alice oswald#one of my favourite poems of all time ever it's one that really Does need to be read in full like quotation will not reproduce the effect#of the repetitions!!!!!!#poetry#long post --#beeps
260 notes
·
View notes
Text
even out here where the water is painfully clear
and to drown in it is to sense the movement of its colour
as a cold mathematical power have you not heard
even out here these stories
how in her house of silverware and deep baths
a woman began to dream she began to wake
and the heart stirring inside her clothes felt bruised
as if a hand was squeezing it
Alice Oswald, from Nobody
81 notes
·
View notes
Text
From the first to the second
Warily, from the tip to the palm
Third leaf (the blackthorn done)
From the fourth to the fifth and
(Larix, Castanea, Fraxinus, Tilia)
Thaw taps, groping in stumps,
frost like an adder easing away
The sixth to the seventh (plum conceive
a knobble in a stone within a blossom)
Ushers the next by the thumbs to the next…
A thirty-first, a thirty-second
A greenwood through a blackwood
passes (like the moon’s halves
meet and go behind themselves)
And you and I, quarter-alight, our boots in shadow
Birch, oak, rowan, ash
chinese-whispering the change.
A Wood Coming into Leaf by Alice Oswald
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
“And HECTOR died like everyone else
He was in charge of the Trojans
But a spear found out the little patch of white
Between his collarbone and his throat
Just exactly where a man’s soul sits
Waiting for the mouth to open
He always knew it would happen
He who was so boastful and anxious
And used to nip home deafened by weapons
To stand in full armour in the doorway
Like a man rushing in leaving his motorbike running
All women loved him
His wife was Andromache
One day he looked at her quietly
He said I know what will happen
And an image stared at him of himself dead
And her in Argos weaving for some foreign woman
He blinked and went back to his work
Hector loved Andromache
But in the end he let her face slide from his mind
He came back to her sightless
Strengthless expressionless
Asking only to be washed and burned
And his bones wrapped in soft cloths
And returned to the ground.”
– Alice Oswald, Memorial
35 notes
·
View notes
Text
from Nobody by Alice Oswald
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
—Anne Carson, Plainwater
—Alice Oswald, Woods etc.
#literature#poetry#water#punishment#mariticide#mythology#danaides#anne carson#alice oswald#ordeal of water
45 notes
·
View notes
Photo
Alice Oswald, from Dart
11 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
dinbilginleri-blog
Din Bilginleri
strawhead96
Strawhead 96s Blog
blueartistic813
Erin's Blog: Professional Procrastinator
vintageclosetss
Untitled
mummybear
Appreciation of Jensen Ackles, Dylan O'Brien And Ian Somerhalder