BRONZE 3

[rozk]

You turn the winter soil. Some months ago
Hawks roosted on the trees. You find a skull,
another, pelvis, thigh. White bones are dull
with mould and soil, but wash them. They will glow

almost translucent, like a shattered pearl.
Clean carefully with spirit. Let them dry.
Careful lest hungry bugs that occupy
Skull's dark recess creep out infest unfurl

a wave across your desk. And then bring paint
gold leaf a chain repurpose what was dead
as art by decoration. In your head
old pain is turned to verse. Or, so no taint

of death remains, furnace, poured wax – these may
turn shape to bronze, burn those dead bones away.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

You been reading Ted Hughes?

Couldn't stand him as a man, but a fine poet!

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Oddly, not at all. Though I can see why you ask. This was a reaction to a friend's post about doing just this and her discussion with other artists about what to do with the bits - and it struck me as a perfect set of symbols for my current feelings about the relationship that I've been obsessed with for the last few months. It also helped me see that the two earlier Bronze poems, which I had thought of as separate from all the others, were in fact more poems about that obsession...The only poet I've been reading much at all lately is Yeats, though I have been thinking of buying Hughes' Ovid simply because I need to do more Catullus and the three big mythological poems that are left are ones that clearly influenced Ovid.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

'what to do with the bits'

You've had me rolling about giggling at a certain memory- when I was in recovery years ago another woman and I had a discussion on this very topic and decided upon freeze drying, sectioning, polishing and mounting as art jewellery :o)

[goliard.livejournal.com]

Hello, I can't quite remember how I stumbled across your journal, but your poems are beautiful; I hope you don't mind that I've friended you. I love the quiet ambiguity of "Clean carefully with spirit", and how the wave of bugs across the desk is mirrored in the wave of verbs across the stanza break.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Bones under trees in leaf-mould take me straight to (in this case a blind alley of) Llew Llaw Gyffes.

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this - I'd say that it's almost Oswaldian, but it is its own poem. In the Oswaldian (Alice) mode, but quite brilliant.

[anef.livejournal.com]

I thought this was fascinating And yes, it reminded me of Hughes, but only the first two lines.

[joculum.livejournal.com]

Lovely and well crafted lines, he said inarticulately. Would that I could do this well.