Vicus
Barningham Moor
roadkill hare
in thin dress
borne of glint
& yet
distilled
semiquaver
breathless
pearl-
essence
takes care
of the tremor
rain gilds
& cleansed
fused
among choirs
chastened
slippage,
your tongue
you sieve
you flinch
crowd scene
the innocent
taste
deep
in the lung’s
blind taper
metobelus
prodigal
in almslight
River Bytham
Myrrh will not grow here, nor lavender, but willows, yes
here in the paradise of willows
I seize your harp & hurl it into the current –
Splayed by the imaginary, it evolves new wings
& played first by fresh, then by salt, only then by blood
Imagine the first men to hear that unearthly threnody –
looking up from their pollen counts
& dendrochronologies, their variable apparels
(it must have been a season like this, some ingathering) –
Taken captive & borne away, the flood
recedes from the documentary, merely glacial, a Babylon
brings geology forward through time
to greet us, hands wet from fishing in deep water
catching everything in nets, except that vanished psalm –
_____________
G.C. Waldrep’s most recent books are feast gently (Tupelo, 2018), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the long poem Testament (BOA Editions, 2015). Waldrep lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he teaches at Bucknell University and edits the journal West Branch. His seventh collection, The Earliest Witnesses, is due out in November 2020 from Tupelo (USA) and Carcanet (UK).