Towards joy

Here's an Iain Crichton Smith verse, which is a favourite of mine ...

... as taken from the pictured, 1992 collected poems:


Listen

Listen, I have flown through darkness towards joy,
I have put the mossy stones away from me
and the thorns, the thistles, the brambles,
I have swum upward like a fish

through the black wet earth, the twined roots
which insanely fight each other
in a grave which creates a treasure house
of light upward-springing leaves.

Such joy, such joy! Such airy drama
the clouds compose in the heavens,
such interchange of comedies,
disguises, rhymes, denouements.

I had not believed that the stony heads
would change to actors and actresses,
and that the grooved armour of statues
would rise and walk away

into a resurrection of villages,
townspeople, citizens, dead exiles,
who sing with the salt in their mouths,
winged nightingales of brine.

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Iain Crichton Smith (1928 - 1998)

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