Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Mimi Khalvati

print this page

Soapstone Creek

The creek sings all night long and all night long
we listen in our sleep, waking from dreams
we recognise as our own undersong
to grief, a gabble of diverted streams

under the paths our lives took, our children's lives
we listened to so avidly but missed
the earliest signs where the ground first gives
and there, later, the very backbone twists,

thinking how blessed we were, wise our choices,
avoiding the crumbling cliff. Yet all the while
those streams, under the cover of children's voices,
were making a mockery of free will.

Nothing's as constant as the creek. The silence
of the forest depends on it. Our deeds,
misdeeds, omissions too, make no more sense
than rattle-cries, flung where the kingfisher breeds.

Under the alders' canopy that steals
their share of sunlight, understory trees,
spread their leaves as they may, can only feel
sun sideways; and some grow accordingly.

 

Untitled - Brian Pomeroy

Mimi Khalvati has published five collections with Carcanet Press, including her Selected Poems in 2000 and, most recently, The Chine. She is the founder of The Poetry School and lives in London.

Page(s) 8

Back to top