I´m wrestling with a new poem in a passion:
a new piece that defies any attempt to put down!
Utterly resistant it will have no truck with notepads,
desktops, paper jottings, formatting, files or fonts.
It confounds utterly my need to type it, write or speak it.
There can be no visible structure, no rhyme, no assonance;
no shred of a classifiable rhythm (which will no doubt
drive all prosody academics to distraction).
Quite without form or substance, nevertheless it is
I am convinced, the most perfect rendering
of that which cannot be rendered:
the most concise expression of the inexpressible!
It is obviously the most important piece I have never written.
How can I even show it you, when it rejects all
of my advances and will no doubt continue
so to do long after all these struggles have ceased?
What am I to do?
And yet perhaps, if I am careful,
it will permit me to whisper this much
as it nuzzles into my palm
(when my fingers are slack and curled),
and shies away from all attempts
to ride it, to brand it or to break it in:
as it delights in eternal contradiction,
with its warm mouth, its jagged tooth,
its feather caress and shark-skin lip:
as it releases the odour of cobwebs,
mixed I should add with evening hyacinths,
cascades pollen into the air,
quickening the eye, the senses,
yet stinging passing limbs
as it sucks life-juices down to the husk,
crackles defiantly with decay,
and seethes with the vigour of Spring…
that I do accept its right to resist
and do salute its indifference.
I will strive to live, as I know must,
with both my lack and my longing.
………………………………Jan 2009
