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 »

Michael Murray

print this page

Sunflower in a neighbour's garden

It’s the way the splayed palms, spades of leaves,
flood out from the trunk
at every juncture a possible function, a new direction:
neutrino tracks in cloud chambers,
a flood of parchment, mapping the march of new
                                                                   discoveries
off the main channel -
that seem to bring down the single-minded, one-
                                                                   directional,
into a dissipation of directions
constantly confounding and confounded by the whole
patterned disaster of the flower’s head.

There’s a thrill of darkness about this brilliance surprises,
like the sun’s darkness,
but brilliance is out-brillianced by detail, full-glow colour
by the maze and whorl of seed heads,
as if the eye’s happiest with idle generalities: once content
with the object, settles to enjoyment:
the vital details wind-in the forebrain, an upright
alertness, the cortex reluctant.

 

Page(s) 32

Back to top