Poem
David Morley
The Invisible Gift
The Invisible Gift
The Invisible Gift
John Clare weaves English words into a nestand in the cup he stipples rhyme, like mud,
to clutch the shape of something he can hold
but not yet hear; and in the hollow of his hearing,
he feathers a space with a down of verbs
and nouns heads-up. There. Clare lays it down
and nestles over its forming sound: taps and lilts,
the steady knocking of the nib on his hand until
it hatches softly beneath him. And when he peers
below his palm, he spies its eyes, hears its peeps,
but does not know what to think. He strokes
its tottering yolk-wet crown; feels a nip against
his thumb, buds of muscle springy at the wing, and all
the hungers of the world to come for this small singing.
© 2013, David Morley
From: The Gypsy and the Poet
Publisher: Carcanet, Manchester
From: The Gypsy and the Poet
Publisher: Carcanet, Manchester
David Morley
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1964)
David Morley, an ecologist and naturalist by background, is one of the most linguistically invigorating poets currently writing in Britain: a poet for whom science, language, and the natural world all meet at a point we might call ‘meaning’. Part Romani, he makes extensive use in his work of his double heritage of Romani and English – two conduits of the secret knowledge, or lore, that makes a ...
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Poems of David Morley
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The Invisible Gift
John Clare weaves English words into a nestand in the cup he stipples rhyme, like mud,
to clutch the shape of something he can hold
but not yet hear; and in the hollow of his hearing,
he feathers a space with a down of verbs
and nouns heads-up. There. Clare lays it down
and nestles over its forming sound: taps and lilts,
the steady knocking of the nib on his hand until
it hatches softly beneath him. And when he peers
below his palm, he spies its eyes, hears its peeps,
but does not know what to think. He strokes
its tottering yolk-wet crown; feels a nip against
his thumb, buds of muscle springy at the wing, and all
the hungers of the world to come for this small singing.
From: The Gypsy and the Poet
The Invisible Gift
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