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Contemporary British Poets

Fiona Sampson

from NER 41.2
Buy the issue in print or as an ebook

FROM ZAGREB
This morning sinks down into its own
light which is also familiar
to know a place and to be comfortable—
comforted even by constancy—
everything returns as Nietzsche said—
doesn’t mean you must belong to it
unless belonging spreads itself like this
shallow-rooted as trackside fireweed
or like graffiti’s wild organic forms
blossoming at the station               seed themselves
trackside on power boxes and palaces
with broken windows that let in the sun
lozenge by lozenge and it’s strange you know
the colour that light makes on wooden boards
and how old plaster smells           this is the south
after another summer          starting here
in all the ways you know the bog oak turned
among the turning willows and the pale
cement embankment of a river shining
in the morning sun these things unfold
pulled by a red tractor like an eye catcher
every journey tells a story like a dream
the tangled woods still delicate with mines
the hunters’ hides piercing the maize like threats
and if a train stops unexpectedly
you see late wasps return return returning
to a branch on the embankment as if
you only recognise the thing you know
already so that your life increasingly
returns to what you loved some first morning
and every place that’s loved too much decays
through repetition so you must choose
to keep on moving though you thread these towns
and fields with a mind that goes running about 
through them touching cement and birch leaves freely
like sunlight local here and everywhere.

LISTEN

Listen. Wind
is coming down
the hill in judgment
through the dark
it moves like a
new law
the sky is not
your friend the night
is not your home
therefore lie
carefully
under the sheet
so your errors
won’t be tallied
You thought
this was home
but the cold hill
we call earth
has turned its back
on visitors
like us who dwell
in dark rooms
beneath a roof
It lies
horribly pale
in the dark
horribly
exposed out there
on the hill
of itself

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Vol. 42, No. 1

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Writer’s Notebook

Writer’s Notebook—Field Dress Portal

Sarah Audsley

Writer’s Notebook—Field Dress Portal

Writing this poem was not a commentary on a rivalry between the sister arts—poetry and painting—but more an experiment in the ekphrastic poetic mode.

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