long land

she spoke to an empty desk until it attacked her. She cried a bit and went into a park but its shadows were too thin. She went down a sally. A sparrowhawk angled into a willowbush. There was silence. Then there was the terrified twitter of when it's too late to be silent. Then the sparrowhawk smashed back out of the bush and flew broadtailed and laden back to its own nestlings.

She went into the wood. When it got dark it also got choked with old snapping twigs, solid tracery, she crashed through it, she tumbled into the ferns and a swirling brook swirled away a biro.

She left the apple on the bottom stair and went down to the boat. On the sandy banks the mining bees rolled massed in a furry mating ball.

Set adrift she ran the boat down the river, wiped the needle and dropped south into the broad fluttering ocean.

supper

or rather, three suppers in a row. Giant puffball (Calvatia gigantea) found in a cow-field on the Levels.

brief history / intercapillary space

These are some new things I've written:

review of Pentti Saarikoski's The Edge of Europe

about the word "Athwart"

about some Denise Riley poems

review of Gunnar Björling's You go the words

In Sweden, I did a few more translations of poems by Karin Boye - the newest ones are "you", "the tree under the earth", and "our eyes are our fate". To improve my Swedish I also read a western (in fact a translation from English).

I'm writing about Alice Notley's In the Pines at the moment.

stateful

Flood in the lane, emergency planning, dull cloudy battlefield overhead. You could get past by pulling yourself up the soft bank using a bramble, then treading the juicy nettle-stems along the top and dropping back down at the far end. If a car came when you were half-way along then you got a soaking.


Do you remember sitting in the car, under the streetlights, writing down my monthly outgoings in your book, and then suddenly it began to fleck purple on the page and on your sums... The raindrops must be coming from outer space, they were dry and they could penetrate the car roof...