| Actions: |
LoFi
HiFi
Download
Snag
Comment
|
| Title: |
Things Accumulate |
| Artist: |
The Last Big Secret
|
| Copyright: |
Caroline Fox |
| Description: |
What I might say to a visiting alien ....
|
| Notes: |
This poem won the Kent University T S Eliot Prize in 2005
|
| Lyrics: |
Things Accumulate
If an astral pilgrim were to ask me
what it's like to be here,
I would have to say
"things accumulate". Then I'd show him
how leaves in autumn fall to freedom -
I'd explain about soil.
I'd take him to beaches of sand and pebble -
explain about oceans, the action of time.
I'd show him bright rectangles where there hung pictures;
point to webbed veils in disused barns.
We'd trip round a scrapyard where oil-stained puddles
moved as kaleidoscopes under the sun;
I'd explain about rust and name all the lichens.
He might me amazed at the pyramids of tyres,
the involuntary sculptures of twisted metal.
I'd have to explain about house-dust and skin.
I'd show him how papers heap on the table:
bills, invitations, half-written thoughts,
and how some gravestones behind the old church
slowly subside and lean on each other, like
sleepy heads in a long train ride.
It follows I should show him the pictures from Auschwitz -
mountains of shoes and spectable-frames.
It follows that I should,
but how could I explain?
Caroline Fox
June 2004
|
|
