Gillian Prew

From 'The Black Stanzas'

(v) an echo of light/a crimson splatter

In a place of grief – light an echo of light –

black rhythms pulse a half-death in

the glass hours of overwintering. Spring

buds a crimson splatter/blooms out

pollen-spiced/world breathing green

beyond the slaughterhouses.

  

(vi) their bud-fists/their black-stamens

Each bold bone rooting/forming their green spines

their bud-fists, their hidden light.  Stacked-up wounds

blooming red upon red/ a season of blood-letting.

Flowers/risen-out/watercolour wounds in the spring rains.

The clavicle-curves of the tulip basins softer than bone/

their black-stamens fastened in like nails.

(vii) a red thread/a soft sadness

Yellow spine/fire neck/a red thread losing its life.

Light   briefest chandelier      patterning the black.

World drifts in/a failing language

piercing the teeth and the tongue/      running

with the wounds to the fields. Cattle turn,

with oak-apple eyes/with drowning teats.

Such a soft sadness/the clear scent of the sun

passing through.

(viii) a heft of hair/the sun locked out

Black factory/a heft of hair         a tumble of bone.

Walls and walls                       stone/invisible

stain. Once eyebright/once midsummer          the song

of the blackbird lifting the light.         Here, the sun

locked out/everything endlessly inward.

(ix) a theatre of starlings/the steeling of water

A theatre of starlings/its swirling black underside

a harmony of soliloquies.        Midwinter

            with its tremulous light/

the soft inking of bare places/the steeling of water.

 
http://gillianprew.com/
https://twitter.com/gillianprew