Coming Forth By Day E-Book

Gabriel Levin

• Herausgeber: Carcanet Poetry
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 44

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Gabriel Levin's new collection breaks new ground in its formal experimentation as well as in its exploration of remote corners of the Mediterranean. The long title poem is written from the multiple perspectives of the personages in Courbet's large painting The Artist's Studio. Courbet's realism blends with ancient eastern mythologies, including the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which gives the collection its title. In another long poem, 'Balthazar's Field', the poet walks the length and breadth of Patmos, seeking out the hidden and the heterogeneous: 'the cave of St John, a Greek priestess's inscription carved on a stone, the rock rose / nestled in its alms of soil'. The book concludes with an extended meditation on modern music ( cored marvels of pitch') written in homage to the composer Alexander Goehr.

Leseprobe

GABRIEL LEVIN

Coming Forth By Day

Acknowledgements

Some of the poems in this collection originally appeared in PNReview, Poetry Review,Raritan and The Wolf.

Contents

Title PageAcknowledgements ACROSS THE NARROWSMoonrise over PythagorioKoreQuercusTenderLines Written on the Trail to Manolates BALTHAZAR’S FIELDUNVEILED IN JERUSALEM‘MY WORN PAMPHLETS CLOSED AGAIN ON THE NAME PAPHOS’PeriplusNumenius ON THE GOODGargoyleBerber SalonuAfter Mallarmé COMING FORTH BY DAYTHE ORPHIC EGG NotesCopyright

ACROSS THE NARROWS

Moonrise over Pythagorio

That the breadth of the [earth’s] shadow is [that] of two moons

Aristarchus of Samos

Kick-butting out of the goatshed,

the pair of them a touch – I could tell –

disappointed seeing the scraping

sound of my approach didn’t tally

with whomever they had expected to show up.

How they two-stepped, pranced, bells

jangling in artful knavery, and cast one last sidelong look

at me straight out of the Pentecostarion:

Oh wondrous paradox! But I had my own

quote of the day and shot back

as they hoofed for cover: we don’t know

how we might or might not

benefit from the numerous errors

hanging about our minds, and scrambled

down the loose chalk path

to the port. Moonrise all goose feathers

over the Tower of Logothetis –

I’d done, though, enough snooping around

for the day and skirted the ruins.

Caterwauling alley cats where the three roads meet

have me by the throat. Don’t expect

any sleep tonight.

Kore

For a moment, giving me

that look of yours, eyes

sweeping over the solid

planes of my columnar stem,

the budding quartz

of my torso, my ribbed chemise,

life quickens – if it were so! –

in what is taken for dead,

grey matter, and, shattered

more than once, losing my head

to Eros, or was it Strife

the war god? (The myth-kitty

won’t leave us alone) –

small comfort if your gaze

brings it all back

and I feel the dove flutter

against my chest.

Stay awhile – won’t you?

Quercus

for N. and B.

I pocket a handful to query on

the sloping path, beyond the schoolhouse

and scattered poppies: teeny skullcaps

and burnished pericarps, a thimble for each finger.

I’d been caught off guard by a pair

of warblers gibber-darting out of sight,

and felt a familiar crunch under my sandals

where they’d fallen it seemed ages ago

and lay sundered among small, dry leaves.

A hard nut to crack people will say,

but the seasons have split the shell open,

half buried in brush under the low, crooked

branches on Cebele’s rocky brow above the bay,

and sticking two caps at each end

I run my finger along its stippled edges –

touch the first sensation we share –

but surely, grown wise, you know that.

And I needn’t mention wood nymphs.

Tender

Its glazed-over gaze held me in my tracks

where the pitted road dipped. It had squirmed

its way down just a bit, leaving behind

a crescent of blood the length of its own honeycoloured

tapering body. Dead, I said to no one

in particular, but then I discerned its scales dilating,

and stepped back as it drew out its fangs

for a split second, Ah, I said, keeping my distance.

And a young woman dressed to kill rounded

the bend of the road, her high heels rasping

against the pavement as she slowed down

and stared, and for a short while we battled

together against our feelings of awe

and revulsion before stick-lifting the dying

creature off the road and parting ways,

and in the fading music of her high heels

I thought I heard a little ditty I’d written years

ago, which went something like ‘We kissed,

we nearly missed, the whistle blew far off

like a hog in the mud. We had it coming to us –

you and I. And the serpent said, “Here,

wrap yourselves in the skin I slough –

don’t be shy.” So we did (we did) knowing

the fruit is tender to the offender.’

Lines Written on the Trail to Manolates

Marble white as the spittle bug’s bright

slobber on the stipule where upstream boulders

tumbled open. Double back, track the runnel

to the fork, chapped heel-skin making the ascent

no easier. There’s no wizardry in letting your gaze

chase in silver the moving scene. Back to

the signpost pointing down, while you soldier

uphill. All you want is a chance to hear

the Pamukkale bird that had you once doubled

over across the narrows. Pinewoods crackling

with birdsong, though not the Great Dissolver.

No dusky Tohu-bohu bird, no One and the Many,

no Mystic Dyad, O Numenius of Apamea,

consorting alone with the good alone, one note lit

by another in the low, hammocked gorge, nothing

to pin a name on shook the sense out of me.

BALTHAZAR’S FIELD

Hold down

the snooze light to tell

the time, near at hand and hard

to grasp, the alarm

slips off the nightstand

while the telltale surf

blubbers in my ear The Thought that Dwells

in the Light, hard

to reconcile yesterday’s flight

over the Alps’ crystal