Poetry from The Literary Review



Of Gravity and Light

JOHN BURNSIDE


                         (lighthouse)

When mist forms over the firth
it slows the gulls that drift around the quay
to something like a standstill
—only the barest
wingbeat troubles the air, the pearl and grey
of light becoming flesh, then vanishing.

You've reached the age for games that mimic flight:
lofted above my head, you are a stream
of giggles, though you know this joy depends
on something other than the trick it seems:
like everything that stalls, or gives us pause,
what we most love reveals itself as danger.

So let the mist come down, let there be haar,
long afternoons of drizzle, months of fog,
that we might know ourselves
—such as we are—
a father and his child, out on the pier,
this weekday morning, guided by a star.


                        (Icarus)

The things that fall
are what we treasure most:

attendants
in the house of gravity,

we sense the imminent
in every book
left open on a table
or a chair;

in every sugar bowl
or deck of cards

we understand
another life resides,

older than time
and dizzy with momentum;

yet, since the soul
is weightless, being neither

flesh and bone, nor shadow,
nor that sound

of falling in the distance
we mistake

for death,
or flight,

nothing is ever solid
in itself,

and substance
is another form of sleep

as feathers are,
no matter that the light

is still around a body
while it falls,

keeping it true, unhindered,
counterpoised,

something immense
to set against the pulse.


                         (blackbird)

It's not the space
between the cherry trees,

the angle of our smoke house
or the sense

of something to be filled
above the lawn;

it's not the gaps
in matter, or the fear

of losing ground
that prompts him

into music
when the thaw

has barely run its course
beneath the house;

but, risen from the ache
of gravity,

the blackbird makes
a territory of light

and fills it with a sound
that feels, to us,

more fruit than stone, more
yolk than lacquered shell,

as if he knew
that nothing could endure

and relishes the fact,
calling the hen

to enter,
through the shadow he perfects

along the garden wall,
beneath the hedge,

in drainage pipes
and dead leaves shot with spore,

a kingdom for the earthbound
while we wait

for some new gaze
to reinvent the sky.


                        (enlightenment)

What we need most, we learn from the menial tasks:
the novice raking sand in Buddhist texts,
or sweeping leaves, his hands chilled to the bone,
while understanding hovers within reach;
the changeling in a folk tale, chopping logs,
poised at the dizzy edge of transformation;

and everything they do is gravity:
swaying above the darkness of the well
to haul the bucket in; guiding the broom;
finding the body's kinship with the earth
beneath their feet, the lattice of a world
where nothing turns or stands outwith the whole;

and when the insight comes, they carry on
with what's at hand: the gravel path; the fire;
knowing the soul is no more difficult
than water, or the fig tree by the well
that stood for decades, barren and inert,
till every branch was answered in the stars.