After Lucretius III

though never the plural:

high barns filled with straw

and the flicker of errant birds

amongst the rafters,

a quiet fish-house, open to the sun,

where the packers sit turned from their work

to smoke or talk,

a litter of gut and ice

on the wet stone floor

catching the light,

or any schoolyard where the children wheel

and turn from their games

as if catching a sound in the distance

and waiting to hear it swell, to make it out:

a noise like water, say,

or gathered birds

far in the almost-heard, in the almost known,

is where it happens, singular and large

and unremarkable, like ice, or fire.



John Burnside

After Lucretius II

-
an absence.

Though each thing dies
into its own becoming,
the shed skin falling away,
still beautiful:

an empty form,
but governed by the moon,
like bone,
or thaw;

and if we are the fleshed
and perishable shadows of a soul
that shifts and slides
beneath this everyday

appearance, we are bound
by greenness and decay to see ourselves
each in the other, staying
and turning aside,

as lovers do, unable to resist
this ebb and flow:
new animals, with nothing in their minds
but light and air,

the creatures
of a sudden mystery,
who hurry on
towards the difficult;



John Burnside