AT HOME
Below the photograph for each poem, you can click on the audio player to hear Mona Arshi read the poem.
Ghazal: Cley
Gentled in the blue-black broth, vanishing circles of Cley.
A returning song, migration song living in the mouth of Cley
Surrender here, your eyes, ears, scratch out a song
a double tongued subsong, carried in the eggs of Cley.
The young crouch, the reed draws out the moths.
Shadow paints shadow into the silence of Cley.
Bird wired to breath, unveil, draw a line, a thread.
Swift things…vanishings, eye, the returning song of Cley.
EGG
We think they are blank
but each seamless egg
carries within it a white library
galleried shelves with radial maps
ancient clocks and all the old habits
from egg tooth to the hollowed barbule
it’s sewn into each feather
these simple light-boned fledglings
they enter this life,
alert to an image of a branch
in another world,
once they cross the shivering oceans
once they cross the shivering oceans
in another world
alert to an image of a branch
they enter this life
these simple light-boned fledglings
it’s sewn into each feather
from egg tooth to the hollowed barbule
ancient clocks and all the old habits
galleried shelves with radial maps
carried within it a white library
each seamless egg
we think they are blank
Before You’re Gone
We’ll stoop
and pick up
brittle souvenirs
parcel them up in marram
grass carried by the alexanders
before they are cut down in the
fraying light. What’s the name of
the bird that once seized, feigns death?
Sky without end in these vanishing lands
Where pink-footed hurts have such quietish roots.
The Yellow Horned Poppy
When is the time to write about flowers?
I want to say sorry, sorry
to your crowned petals you are shy you
don’t want to be seen; these are
desperate times and sometimes
language picks us clean.
I have caught you now flickering in
my peripheral vision, nodding
in the shingle, non-parasitic foreigner
I am lowering my eyes but where
can I hold you if I cannot peel
back a syllable under the big skies.
For The Human
Voice of a Poem Buried in the shingle, North Sea, Cley
We say a heart is heavy when it aches,
as a hand aches writing lines in the dark.
On the highest shelf of my heart there sits
a limpet, empty of course and next to that
(and this is the human part) there’s a pistol.
Surviving inside the throat of this pistol
is a body of a small bird, with her own heart
beating out, fluttering inside the barrel.
Heart, my resolution is not to ache but to hold.
Birds arrive, birds depart, banking, swerving
into the marshes, populating these lines.
A colony of cormorants lands lightly
on a ruby samphired ledge, so many birds
their hearts all moving much faster than mine.
Syllabising The Birds (The Godwit, The Gray Lag Goose, The Lapwing)
I am standing in the shadow bands.
Oh wei! Kui Thoreh Deh Chug-
Nothing behaves as it should.
-a-teh- Rakh lai, dekh leh
The wind bites and language is one moment
Hass lai - akh-akh Thoreh-deh, thoreh-deh
a warm feather the next
Chore! Chore! Kui! Kui!
it is a roar in your ear.
Three Ways with a Lapwing
Standing here in the dark rain
a pair of lapwings softly
announce themselves.
I too am a visitor and sometimes
the truth can other us like
thup, bharish and havar, all
all the weather words I take
out for you now.
Yesterday, I listened to the song
of warbler, slowed right down it
sounded like a fox on its errands
in the dark. Kui Kui wei wei
the lapwings call, or perhaps they
instruct and I travel to the back
of a dream with the plangent sound.
Do you know that if you push
against the wind a thousand
rivets loosen? Perhaps we are only
asking the wrong question and
I need another language
for all the vanishings.
Hurry (a Migration Song)
Hurry now you bright-eyed dark-throated
chanters of the Cley. Hurry now from
the beach Shingle to Arnolds place,
the croakers …the swift-winged...
hurry now the kee kee of the kestrels,
the solitary, you divers, the warblers of the reeds...
in thin rain you soft crested lapwings,
hurry … the wardens of the marsh
little egrets, wind hoverers, into the vanishing
into the bone -white sky, the high
banks of the clouds, hurry now through
the samphire as pink embeds purple
silvers...hurry into salt air, come away
now...
>br>
Gentled in the blue-black broth, vanishing circles of Cley.
A returning song, migration song living in the mouth of Cley
Surrender here, your eyes, ears, scratch out a song
a double tongued subsong, carried in the eggs of Cley.
The young crouch, the reed draws out the moths.
Shadow paints shadow into the silence of Cley.
Bird wired to breath, unveil, draw a line, a thread.
Swift things…vanishings, eye, the returning song of Cley.
We think they are blank
but each seamless egg
carries within it a white library
galleried shelves with radial maps
ancient clocks and all the old habits
from egg tooth to the hollowed barbule
it’s sewn into each feather
these simple light-boned fledglings
they enter this life,
alert to an image of a branch
in another world,
once they cross the shivering oceans
once they cross the shivering oceans
in another world
alert to an image of a branch
they enter this life
these simple light-boned fledglings
it’s sewn into each feather
from egg tooth to the hollowed barbule
ancient clocks and all the old habits
galleried shelves with radial maps
carried within it a white library
each seamless egg
we think they are blank
We’ll stoop
and pick up
brittle souvenirs
parcel them up in marram
grass carried by the alexanders
before they are cut down in the
fraying light. What’s the name of
the bird that once seized, feigns death?
Sky without end in these vanishing lands
Where pink-footed hurts have such quietish roots.
When is the time to write about flowers?
I want to say sorry, sorry
to your crowned petals you are shy you
don’t want to be seen; these are
desperate times and sometimes
language picks us clean.
I have caught you now flickering in
my peripheral vision, nodding
in the shingle, non-parasitic foreigner
I am lowering my eyes but where
can I hold you if I cannot peel
back a syllable under the big skies.
Voice of a Poem Buried in the shingle, North Sea, Cley
We say a heart is heavy when it aches,
as a hand aches writing lines in the dark.
On the highest shelf of my heart there sits
a limpet, empty of course and next to that
(and this is the human part) there’s a pistol.
Surviving inside the throat of this pistol
is a body of a small bird, with her own heart
beating out, fluttering inside the barrel.
Heart, my resolution is not to ache but to hold.
Birds arrive, birds depart, banking, swerving
into the marshes, populating these lines.
A colony of cormorants lands lightly
on a ruby samphired ledge, so many birds
their hearts all moving much faster than mine.
I am standing in the shadow bands.
Oh wei! Kui Thoreh Deh Chug-
Nothing behaves as it should.
-a-teh- Rakh lai, dekh leh
The wind bites and language is one moment
Hass lai - akh-akh Thoreh-deh, thoreh-deh
a warm feather the next
Chore! Chore! Kui! Kui!
it is a roar in your ear.
Standing here in the dark rain
a pair of lapwings softly
announce themselves.
I too am a visitor and sometimes
the truth can other us like
thup, bharish and havar, all
all the weather words I take
out for you now.
Yesterday, I listened to the song
of warbler, slowed right down it
sounded like a fox on its errands
in the dark. Kui Kui wei wei
the lapwings call, or perhaps they
instruct and I travel to the back
of a dream with the plangent sound.
Do you know that if you push
against the wind a thousand
rivets loosen? Perhaps we are only
asking the wrong question and
I need another language
for all the vanishings.
Hurry now you bright-eyed dark-throated
chanters of the Cley. Hurry now from
the beach Shingle to Arnolds place,
the croakers …the swift-winged...
hurry now the kee kee of the kestrels,
the solitary, you divers, the warblers of the reeds...
in thin rain you soft crested lapwings,
hurry … the wardens of the marsh
little egrets, wind hoverers, into the vanishing
into the bone -white sky, the high
banks of the clouds, hurry now through
the samphire as pink embeds purple
silvers...hurry into salt air, come away
now...
>br>