You scan the stream, silver-eyed as a heron
searching the surface for what might betray
a halt in the flow, pentameter’s delay,
a master’s faded words, his lexicon.
Before you, found in an old book
marking a page, a longhand manuscript.
Look, where the knib unloaded ink and dipped
and rose again, leaving a blot on the downstroke,
writing by candlelight in another century,
wind in the chimney, maybe, the pen’s small sound.
You write: ‘Anonymous. Date a mystery.
Some words illegible. No signature found.’
Yet the poem sings in your mind from the silent archive
and all the dead words speak, aloud, alive.
Copyright, 2011. First published in Clarke’s collection, Ice, by Carcanet Press, in 2008. With permission of poet.
Keeping (and Telling) the Past 