Delius As I Knew Him
The bushes are alert with swift colours:
yellows, scarlet like a choir of tongues,
shifting greens tall as a requiem,
deep-woven browns like the bass notes from
a violin. Today the garden’s ripe
with noise, the birds’ shrill posturing, the flies’
long mumbling from lavender to rose.
Such subtleties of pitch and tone as these
rush on me, rude and new, when I step out
after a morning scratching note by note
through the footsteps of the songs of summer
trying to follow his blind striding after
sounds that slip away like hares or run
in glassy passions from a mountain’s crown.
The measure of my failure is the scent
of apple blossom dangling on the wind,
a thrush’s voice struggling with the weight
of everything I know I’ve lost and learnt.
Page(s) 59
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The