i haven’t listened to the soil’s breathy gossip
since the oven crusted me

i have not had the field’s weeds’ wonder still me
since i learned the paths of men

i have not let rain claim my face
then cleanse any eye-open authority
since i said what i must do

i have not soared the storm’s heart-catch-fly me
since the forecast reasons weathered me

i have not felt my care-full life
since my ways of life imprisoned me

A. H / K. H-H (24th August 2018 – August 2019 & title April 2020)

recording :

I quite like this poem, but recording it made it feel a bit static, I thought that my voice initially, not as with it as when I wrote it. I did that when I was reading a lot of Rilke and thought of calling it ‘after Rilke’, but it would have to be a lot better to dare to be that.

Recording it has led me to tinker with it in small ways and I hope it now reads a bit more smoothly and loses some of its too much portentousness.

I got the title quite a long time after writing it. I posted first it when I wrote it and again as a cairn poem for my first year of posting (I think something about its language makes me feel its more of a proper poem – but these worries above are that it is too sure of that in itself). I think I have a sense that it is a bit too correct somehow, trying, perhaps it is the structure that makes it seem so, so I’ve varied the repetition a bit, given I try to vary the syntax of the rest, which does all speak to my heart really. I will think about this, I didn’t realise I’d learn as much by recording. It might not have escaped its seriousness yet, too much in love with its first idea.

toni