Poetry International Poetry International
Poem

John Burnside

OVER KELLIE

OVER KELLIE

OVER KELLIE

If summer is conversation,
then winter is thought;

or so it seems tonight: rain in the trees
and, halfway between our house
and the neighbour’s farm,

a lost ewe in the fence-wire
waits for dawn;

as I am waiting now,
for something new:

a way of thinking come in from the fields;
a music, spare and empty as a psalm,

or like a question no one thinks to ask
until the wind remembers on his skin,
a sky beneath the sky, the dreaming grass,

acres of homeland, measured out in stars.
Close

OVER KELLIE

If summer is conversation,
then winter is thought;

or so it seems tonight: rain in the trees
and, halfway between our house
and the neighbour’s farm,

a lost ewe in the fence-wire
waits for dawn;

as I am waiting now,
for something new:

a way of thinking come in from the fields;
a music, spare and empty as a psalm,

or like a question no one thinks to ask
until the wind remembers on his skin,
a sky beneath the sky, the dreaming grass,

acres of homeland, measured out in stars.

OVER KELLIE

Sponsors
Gemeente Rotterdam
Nederlands Letterenfonds
Stichting Van Beuningen Peterich-fonds
Ludo Pieters Gastschrijver Fonds
Lira fonds
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