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Maura Dooley

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Walking

for Miroslav Mandic and Jo Shapcott

Miroslav Mandic is walking.
From Holderlin to Rimbaud he journeys
with solitude, a walking stick, sweat.
It was the walking stick and me walking,
the two of us like waves.
It was the walking stick and me walking,
homelessness and I.
In villages where they don’t know
what poetry is, what art is, he explains
his walking, he explains poetry:
he tells them it is like love,
he tells them it is sweat.
I read his work in clumsy translation,
the road opened me, he writes.
Can he mean that? Just that? Yes.

Miroslav Mandic is walking
from Rimbaud to Blake, not to honour their work,
not because they are important, but to celebrate
poetry. Sometimes wind blows colder than rain,
sometimes milk curdles in his knapsack,
but it is nothing, none of it matters,
and it is everything. Isn’t language also walking?
Isn’t walking also a form of writing?
Isn’t the road the greatest, the most beautiful
building in the world?

Miroslav Mandic is walking.
At Bunhill Fields, near Blake’s grave,
on London grass, his walking stick
becomes a huge pen, forms the word i,
in his country this means and.
And each footfall is an and, and each footfall
a small connecting word, a conjunctive,
a continuance, and, and, and.
He walks in order to turn every there into here
and he tells us it is like love,
he tells us it is sweat,
he tells us it is poetry, and

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