{"id":2426,"date":"2013-04-12T13:50:20","date_gmt":"2013-04-12T13:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2426"},"modified":"2013-04-29T15:18:12","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T15:18:12","slug":"three-poems-by-anne-compton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2426","title":{"rendered":"Three Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"formal<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nHaar<\/em>: frost smoke off the North Atlantic<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even the words overcast December day<\/em> have slack in them,
\na falling away sound. Someone\u2019s taken an eraser to colour:
\nEverything\u2019s pavement grey. Absolute, I\u2019d say, is the word
\nfor bare trees, and the river, icing up, looks a cast-off shield.
\nCrows, in their military coats, are undeterred. They\u2019re warriors \u2013
\nscouts perhaps \u2013 for the withdrawn king whose wounds turned
\nhis mind: Smirch of ash, his sense of it. Grey\u2019s the one colour
\nthat\u2019s its own complement. Nothing answers.<\/p>\n

Even so, there\u2019s a three-foot scud of frost rabbiting over the ground,
\nand yesterday \u2013 I suddenly remember \u2013 on the Lower Cove Loop,
\ndidn\u2019t a fox cross in front of me, lagging his bushy tail? A dancer
\nwho didn\u2019t get away by dawn. Carouser, glad of the frost cover \u2013
\nthe haar<\/em> in from the harbour. Houses, up to their knees in it,
\nare off their foundations, or so it seems. Down there \u2013 at ground
\nlevel \u2013 the world\u2019s tipsy with quickening light.
\n 
\n<\/p>\n

Biography of the Poet<\/strong><\/p>\n

He\u2019s gone over the Bridge of Sighs, feet shambling the yellowed limestone.
\nProbably he\u2019s in one of the interrogation rooms. Only child, born to old parents,
\nhe has a lot to answer for. Sins, in petto<\/em>, to be named in one of the dead languages.<\/p>\n

In his childhood, bread soldiers every breakfast, and cosseting. Her afternoons
\nin the sewing closet, making a winter coat for him, epaulettes in red.
\nWhat she wished for him \u2013 the armature of a king, or a legionnaire, at least.<\/p>\n

He went out for words, went west. A newsagent on a passenger train:
\nIts rhythm, his rhythm. The wheel\u2019s incessant revolution \u2013 lifelong, longlife<\/em> \u2013
\nsatisfied in a sequence of sonnets.<\/p>\n

Found a voice in the newspaper\u2019s front page, impersonal as a dateline \u2013
\nthe only possible pattern now<\/em>. The boy that was: Perishable as newsprint.
\nAn inky lacuna in the biography: A dark pond at the centre of the hub city.<\/p>\n

How many alleyways are there to an answer? You\u2019d like to know \u2013
\nwouldn\u2019t you \u2013 the last thing said, the morning of his last day: I wish
\nsomeone would carry my sentences for me.<\/em> They\u2019re getting so heavy.<\/p>\n

The human fear of night fowl comes into it, those nocturnals
\nwho have heard it all \u2013 their finer ears \u2013 and nothing forgotten.<\/p>\n

Past the pergola, he saw how the fog was holding up the heads of lilies,
\nreminding him of a weight he\u2019d refused: A girl\u2019s head bent toward him.<\/p>\n

The rowboat at the pier for after. Ladder down. I wanted his torment,
\nthe entire history of him in my breath, breathing freely. The nearest-to, this<\/em>.
\n 
\n<\/p>\n

Fire and Grammar<\/strong><\/p>\n

How is it you can miss what you still have?
\nEarlier versions crowding the chesterfield \u2013<\/p>\n

agrammatical. Backward run the sentences.
\nBroca\u2019s area of the brain unable to manage.<\/p>\n

Lordy, lordy, where\u2019s the rapture gone?
\nWhat comes through the night \u2013 sensible in rainwear
\nand step-ins \u2013 a has-been. No heat to it whatsoever.<\/p>\n

The past\u2019s a train \u2013 tracks torn up. Rabbits and rodents
\noverrunning the rail-bed.<\/p>\n

Everyone\u2019s late to nostalgia: It\u2019s where you have to go
\non foot. Whinging over the cinders.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not possible to be active in the past,
\nand passive sentences are a tedious think-through:<\/p>\n

Headlamp to my hurrying feet, the future: What a mistake that was.<\/p>\n

So busy with the finish, I forgot to burnish
\nthe everyday brass: Sconce either side the daylit mirror.<\/p>\n

Mirrors are lateral thinkers: Reverse left to right. Likewise,
\nthe left brain talks to the right foot. Verticality, so far.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re done for good, the one that\u2019s full-length
\nshows the image upended.<\/p>\n

Wittgenstein\u2019s duck-rabbit has to be this or that,
\nbut what happens when the barnyard empties?<\/p>\n

Another way of putting it: Soon as it comes
\ninto being, the past\u2019s a fiction. The one you loved,<\/p>\n

relocated there: Flensed to a few words, a paragraph maybe.
\nAnd yourself? Already, someone\u2019s fingering the spine.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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