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

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Graham Mort

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Alum Pot

This is the entrance
To the speech of water,
The exit from the cries
Of birds.

Ash and hawthorn stitch
Rock lips to the moor;
Roots are sutures,
Moss makes a green salve
On a void misted with blue light.

This hole is a magnet
Joining bone to bone:
Your agility, your warm
Wind-tasting skin
To the jarring dark.

Skylarks start up from the moor,
Flash nervous white ensigns.
Limestone emerges from grass -
Whalebone from deep water.

Alum pot swallows itself,
Never-ending breathless gulp
Of its stone-hoarse larynx;
The eye’s pupil finds a mirror
Of black.

Hands scrabble for grip
At the spray-wet bark of trees.
The cries of gulls ricochet
From the rim of the tunnel
That has reared upright
To let light fall through
A peat-beck’s flung prisms.

This is the entrance
And the exit,
Alpha and Omega of the wind-choked,
Sky-dizzy, grass bewildered travellers
Who are dared to fall
Into the possibilities
Of their lives.

Page(s) 17

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