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

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Ian Caws

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Feather

Now and then, the bones of some animal,
A rabbit’s rib, the vertebrae of sheep,
Distracted him as he walked the last mile.
Every time, he marvelled how their shape
Had perfectly fitted the life now gone,
The movement spent that would not come again.

Then, in ragged grass, a seagull feather,
Undamaged, clean as his hand that touched it,
Stirred the days when they had been together
Watching birds on the water after flight,
When he said he would, against all reason,
Tilt the morning, point its edge to the sun.

But a feather, as now, was all he kept,
Left it on the piano with a note.
He continued his journey while they slept
And liked their music but would not play it,
So that they thought him strange and forgot him
And lost his photograph in a new time.

Older now, at the valley’s other end,
He remembered the pathways and welcome
Of gone summers. And how, on a lit sand,
Gulls’ feathers would harden and break like some
Heresy, disowned but extant perhaps,
And sharp like hair on the face of a corpse.

Page(s) 12-13

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