The Nightfields by Joanna Klink

Author:Joanna Klink [Klink, Joanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

CROSSLAND

I crossed the streets at five,

past the park, the wind knocking at swings.

Or I was unable to pass by—

children at the slides, a few dogs flying at sticks,

the murmur of a peace that is

constant in this world and impossible to keep.

I go on trying. I could call out or not.

I could try to stop their suffering

across those months or I could not.

It kept on without me—

I made no mark, I saw no gate,

there were no clues no games no breeze.

I tried to drive into my skull some right

reprieve, and when I could not,

held on to sleep, I winced

and turned away, I let my heart

thin as it opened out, I went again

and again into the moods of late afternoons,

I walked through a recurrence of equal dusks,

admitting no other presence except for them

who were gone, my friends, I hoped

every hope for them and there was nothing

for that hope to catch on, I wondered

if there might, some hour, appear an element

to shelter and bring far into winter

such path-lights that do not tell you where to go

but nevertheless, against the blue night, burn.

I asked not how long but who am I

that walks in this direction. What then is mine.

These sore lungs, my bones

drifting out across the pavement

as if it could be made right by time

and voyaging, and the sky offer some sign

beyond its cloud-swept

motion—a pardon.

Please. Give us birds.

A light unto a world. An undistorted,

ancient ornament—some swift way

out of the earth.

Where the stones are laid.

Where we are laid.

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