Carol Watts, Occasionals (again)

Charles Alexander's useful review of Occasionals:

http://jacket2.org/reviews/architecture-rings-true

Today is the 8th of July. Consultation of Occasionals shows that it has two poems for this day, like a Brahms pairing.

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The first poem (springcuts XIII)is preoccupied with darkness on a bright day. Some are out in the sun, gardening ("Took off his shirt to grow a bed.").

Yet. "When voices are dark from open windows"... "the dull kick of resignation".

Coming into focus:

All you have to say to me. A woman
is speaking, where pain is. Domestic
it comes in shades of eavesdropped.
Lack, of light.

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The second poem (springcuts XIV) isn't without pain, either. In the first half, we circulate memories of thngs lost, maybe only imagined. (Hopkins' "Binsey Poplars" in the offing.)

In the second half, the poem focusses on a childhood memory. Of the gang throwing stones at an unpopular girl. The poet comments:

Loyalties, I was silent but. This was virtue,
to stick by in a stoning.

And she notices that the cruel girl seemed brave when stoned, with a scar on her lips.