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Saturday 22 March 2014

Excerpts from 'She' by Christine Murray (Oneiros Books)

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Wake up and walk /
           Carry your injury with you




Wake up and walk /
Carry your injury with you
It is of no use to sit and weep
Clear the path for it winds
serpentine from stones to groves
Groves are small coves of tree in a
Black sea
There is no going back
There is no lying still in grief
The journey you are taking is already mapped
Wake up and walk now carry with you the scars
Your tears
Your newly dead,
Your emptied heart cup




Drag



Did the mirror rent
What of the spheres
The tongues of glass ?
The memory of a cloud
A shattering arm ...
Not unless it was of mercury
Body drags to the hill
Travel is not light nor is it easy
Mirrors architrave told the story of a woman
Quitting her chariot to offer a heart-cup and
There are two on the path
Two will not look at her face





Crinoline /
A memory


The forest is waxing autumnal
My hem is wet-scooping burrs/
                                        Small leaves
Trailing them noisily
To the low throat music of the thrush
A slow rook overpasses
I did not see the woman
Until she was upon me
Helping me up
She tapped my boot
She grabbed my elbow
I have gone over it again
and again/
       Its always the same
Her eye so bright
As She glided away
I picked the twigs
From the frayed lace
Readied it again for stitching
I do not remember her face



 



from 'Grove'





I dared not look at the trees


Their pewters
Their ossified trunks
Their dark feathering

The inky black quills of them

          
I was caught there veil-lashed
In the place/not place
Where She stalks

This is not the covered corridor


Where once I heard a buildings low groaning
Where groin-vaults draw to the sky as curtains
Where the sense of others is a low murmur

There is not a shadow here

This is outside
Without weather


Tree as metal
Leaf as feather


Stones as big as man
And they sweat real tears

Willows stand grieved
Their blades lashing her face.

              And proceed ?


'She' is available from Oneiros Books here

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