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 »

Fred Ostrander

print this page

The Stone

The stone - toward which all passion and quests are
directed -
love, it rests, simply, upon a crude ledge within a cave
in some immense, unidentified mountain wall -
a range of violet and light, of rare and adamantine
          minerals,
a Urals of goat trails and sunrises.

Hideous to many, it will resemble the bag of black leather
           left behind in his bewilderment by the gentle physician
           whose eyes as he departs fill and glisten, who lowers 
           his head, raising his arm to his forehead.

And in the great hall, delicately ceilinged, where the
           rain-light shimmers through the many panes of the
           windows like Isadora floating among the scarves, it is
           the unmoving alabaster of the Roman brow.

It is the seventh of the difficult encounters.

And where the archer of the legends lives alone - in a
           doorframe, in the pine mountains - aged now, wizened
           and amused - it is the shadow of a fish moving upon the
           luminous pebbles... It is the luminous shadow moving
           upon the deep pebbles.

Page(s) 39

Back to top