Alice Oswald Poems

Good God!
What did I dream last night?
I dreamt I was the moon.
...

I heard a cough
as if a thief was there
outside my sleep
a sharp intake of air

a fox in her fox-fur
stepping across
the grass in her black gloves
barked at my house

just so abrupt and odd
the way she went
hungrily asking
in the heart's thick accent

in such serious sleepless
trespass she came
a woman with a man's voice
but no name

as if to say: it's midnight
and my life
is laid beneath my children
like gold leaf
...

This is the day the flies fall awake mid-sentence
and lie stunned on the windowsill shaking with speeches
only it isn't speech it is trembling sections of puzzlement which
break off suddenly as if the questioner had been shot

this is one of those wordy days
when they drop from their winter quarters in the curtains and sizzle as they fall
feeling like old cigarette butts called back to life
blown from the surface of some charred world

and somehow their wings which are little more than flakes of dead skin
have carried them to this blackened disembodied question

what dirt shall we visit today?
what dirt shall we re-visit?

they lift their faces to the past and walk about a bit
trying out their broken thought-machines
coming back with their used-up words

there is such a horrible trapped buzzing wherever we fly
it's going to be impossible to think clearly now until next winter
what should we
what dirt should we
...

Born on Monday and a tiny
world-containing grain of light
passed through each eye like heaven through a needle.
...

Various stars. Various kings.
Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights.
Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers,
...

Once I was half flower, half self,

That invisible self whose absence inhabits mirrors,

That invisible flower that is always inwardly,
...

This is what happened
the dead were settling in under their mud roof
and something was shuffling overhead

it was a badger treading on the thin partition

bewildered were the dead
going about their days and nights in the dark
putting their feet down carefully and finding themselves floating
but that badger

still with the simple heavy box of his body needing to be lifted
was shuffling away alive

hard at work
with the living shovel of himself
into the lane he dropped
not once looking up

and missed the sight of his own corpse falling like a suitcase towards him
with the grin like an opened zip
(as I found it this morning)

and went on running with that bindweed will of his
went on running along the hedge and into the earth again
trembling
as if in a broken jug for one backwards moment
water might keep its shape
...

It is said that after losing his wife, Orpheus was torn to
pieces by Maenads, who threw his head into the River
Hebron. The head went on singing and forgetting,
filling up with water and floating way.




Eurydice already forgetting who she is
with her shoes missing
and the grass coming up through her feet



searching the earth
for the bracelet of tiny weave on her charcoal wrist





the name of a fly or flower already forgetting who they are
they grow they grow
till their bodies break their necks



down there in the stone world
where the grey spirits of stones he around uncertain of their limits
matter is eating my mind I am in a river



I in my fox-cap
floating between the speechless reeds
I always wake like this being watched


already forgetting who I am
the water wears my mask I call I call
lying under its lashes like a glance




if only a child on a bridge would hoik me out




there comes a tremor and there comes a pause




down there in the underworld
where the tired stones have fallen
and the sand in a trance lifts a little
it is always midnight in those pools



iron insects engraved in sleep



I always wake like this being watched



I always speak to myself
no more myself but a colander
draining the sound from this never-to-be mentioned wound



can you hear it
you with your long shadows and your short shadows





can you hear the severed head of Orpheus




no I feel nothing from the neck down



already forgetting who I am
the crime goes on without volition singing in its bone
not I not I
the water drinks my mind




as if in a black suit
as if bent to my books
only my face exists sliding over a waterfall




and there where the ferns hang over the dark
and the midges move between mirrors
some woman has left her shoes
two crumpled mouths
which my voice searches in and out




my voice being water
which holds me together and also carries me away
until the facts forget themselves gradually like a contrail



and all this week
a lime-green hght troubles the riverbed
as if the mud was haunted by the wood



this is how the wind works hard at thinking
this is what speaks when no one speaks
...

It is the story of the falling rain
to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower
to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary
that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water's wishes and this tale
hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail

if only I a passerby could pass
as clear as water through a plume of grass

to find the sunlight hidden at the tip
turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip

then I might know like water how to balance
the weight of hope against the light of patience

water which is so raw so earthy-strong
and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along

drawn under gravity towards my tongue
to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song

which is the story of the falling rain
that rises to the light and falls again
...