‘I want my funeral to include this detour.’<\/em> We come apart. In time. The nerve-knitting that we call an \u2018I\u2019 *<\/p>\n ‘The tree house he had built, love poet, carpenter’.<\/em> All night in the wind it was the hiss, the itch, the as if it wished to be inside, inside the room where he, in his head. This will not leave him now. And so the love *<\/p>\n \u2018What tension, walking a different path in another direction.\u2019<\/em> Direction was his forte, which way was north, priding himself that what <\/p>\n Dear Ivor, iPhones… Such worldly spirits, as acquisitive The sun came out. The charring edge unpicked like this: a sonnet, dissolution in a strict for Ivor Davies, artist of destruction<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Writing Into the Lines ‘I want my funeral to include this detour.’ Michael Longley, Detour. We come apart. In time. The nerve-knitting that we call an \u2018I\u2019 unravels. Which of you is at home when I ask, Where do you want to go today? We\u2019re going nowhere. I hardly know if it is your or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[371,372],"tags":[375],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nMichael Longley, Detour.<\/p>\n
\nunravels. Which of you is at home when I ask, Where do you want
\nto go today?<\/em> We\u2019re going nowhere. I hardly know if it is your or my
\nmistake, taking my son for me; if the dim weather of your funeral
\nwith spits of rain is now, or last year, or to come. Let\u2019s go to\u2026 to\u2026<\/em>
\nWe\u2019re lost in sentences that never quite arrive. Or widen, to include
\nmore possibilities, more times, than any voice could hold, even this
\nbright sudden space in which we meet, the graveyard just a detour.<\/p>\n
\nMichael Longley, Tree House<\/p>\n
\nsheer unease of it at the bedroom window: elder tree
\nwith a creak in its joints, its leaning too close to the house <\/p>\n
\nall night, covered his ears. Who\u2019d started this? He had,
\nsaying the words: witch elder. The sound of it built <\/p>\n
\nof word for word gives birth to, misbegets, the poet.
\nSend for the axeman. Send for the word-carpenter.<\/p>\n
\n Dorothy Nimmo, Homewards.<\/p>\n
\nanother would call being lost for him was the tingle of tension
\nin the nerves, the muscles. Trust me, he\u2019d say and be off and walking
\npath after path, left, right, a knot garden of ways, each step a
\ndifferent leading. Same difference, others would say. How indifferent
\na man can be in the temperate zone, in a life like a worn path
\nwalking him home, believing he held north and south in trust, in
\n tension, till the stroke. Till he woke to a strange room, a door to another\u2026.
\nWhat, he couldn’t say. The compass needle spins, north in every direction.<\/p>\nBurnt Offering<\/h5>\n
\n The poem that you burned for me
\nwent up, like Ghost Month on the streets of Singapore,
\nthose lick-me-clean sidewalks, littered piously:
\ntoy money for the dead, real sweets, and cardboard <\/p>\n
\nas us. And why not? We have life to spare
\nand stuff. I’ve kept your soup can, and the final twist
\nunburned. Some ash. The moment, though, is… where?<\/p>\n
\nitself; the flame was nothing we could see.
\nThe words curled up, translated into air <\/p>\n
\nform, knotted matter coming graciously
\nundone. So we curate the breath. Take care. <\/p>\n