What I think of this? superb, great work Kasper! There is a channeling of
voices, a world of ghosts, the incipit and the end that brings to another
beginning, and a clear young surprised voice that enters for the final twist
with the I's (the narrator's) respectful awe in front of creation and grants
honesty to the composition. A symphony.
I might find some flaws at further readings, this after my second way
through it.
:-)
On 5/18/07, kasper salonen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> this is a poem I wrote yesterday in something of a frenzy, small edits
> have been made afterwards. I feel very positively about this piece,
> but I'd love it if you petcers could have a critical look at it; I'd
> like to send it off to a magazine I have high regard for, called Anon.
> your attention would mean a lot to me. thanks.
> (the word "treasure!" is meant to be italicised)
>
>
> "white skulls"
>
> for eight days, an angular, bellowing machine
> has pawed a gentle chaos in our garden
> with the clumsy ease of a digging bear.
>
> the slight rise by the stranded bricks
> of a failed flowerbed is gone,
> the tangle of a rattled, flowerless bush
> is gone:
>
> what's left is the groan of a damp land
> released, having choked on the scuttled
> bowels of its clay-mixed ship for decades.
>
> it's not just me who feels breathing ease:
> the grandad-appletree, gnarled from birth,
> fixes a different wind in its hybrid limbs.
>
> walking here, after the kind claw has gone,
> is like touring a ruin¯except here
> time is reset. sixty years evaporate
> in the soil's softened, rearing-green sting.
>
> the far end is a new place, heaven
> given slender thorns¯a bullace plum
> swaying new, nettle-moat lost.
>
> at its root, cool dots on the kneaded loam,
> are strange remnants: the first thought,
> treasure! they are frail to see. to touch,
>
> more precious than bone. the ghost of a snail
> left a goodbye-swirl on its abandoned mask,
> then let it bleach: not in terror, or from dark,
>
> but from the tiny processes of dirt
> that pressed the brown into their pores,
> caused shining landshells to clicker up.
>
> I gather them like pyramid berries,
> like ceramic mushrooms
> made by infinite hands.
>
> their clack & stillness as I place them down
> is that of the miracle of bones, the sigh
> of thinning structures: white skulls
> housing the sound of the world.
>
> KS
>
|