ROSELLE ANGWIN
What We Learn in the Dark
There’s nothing in my life I can call my own
not even my time. Sometimes – some time –
I could, or might, regret this; today though
it feels like a gift – how can hands receive
unless they first become empty? I’m learning
to like that somewhere-and-nowhere place
of letting go, of owning nothing. Outside,
dawn after dawn, the songthrush opens her beak
and the world pours through her
and then through me. I’d like to be that tree –
a holding-together of earth and sky,
steadying the wind for a dance –
in love with dawn, with dusk,
with rain, with sun – with translating
these into buds, fruit, leaf-fall.
The title is from a poem by John Burnside.
Yesterday
So take these words
turn them into the colour
of sky, a burst of cello song
this snipe startling
from the underbrush
turn them into a few grains of sand
turn them into yesterday
turn them into love
then let them go
none of us gets out of here
alive
