Poetry: “restlessly, driven by leaves” by Gillian Prew

“restlessly, driven by leaves.”
 
after a line by Rilke
 
Leaf-sound/sea-sound/bird-sound/
shoved places of air –
pockets of autumn/natural languages.
 
*
The scuffed water/the swinging fruits/the ruffled gulls
 
                        - wind with its throat open.
 
*
 
The soaring cold barks at windows like a kept-out dog
whines through the small spaces/slows the old.
 
*
And in cold’s quiet undertow blood is not quite wide enough/blood
clotted on pavements rowanberry red.
 
*
My ear to the stone     hard/hard
a murmur is coming/
a tremble of locked-up hooves.
 
*
Jackdaws and magpies land on the treetops.
The branches flap/they wave.
An old man looks up in his flat cap/
his mouth a shut wound.
 
*
Kolya, ghost-white
traipsing the ochre-cluttered gardens
            and Milo, a shadow/
his guts thrust up to his chest.
 
*
Autumn/
the days loop-gusts tight to the bone
loose to the sky/the lifted holes.

“restlessly, driven by leaves” from A Wound’s Sound by Gillian Prew. Published Oneiros Books, 2014 A WOUND’S SOUND   Gillian Prew   The ambient howl-sound pervades everything. The gutted beasts are everywhere – billions raised and slaughtered for food globally each year. ‘A Wound’s Sound’ is an attempt to distill and voice their pain and their silence.

Oneiros Books Poetry Catalogue

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