Poem
John Burnside
SI DIEU N’EXISTAIT PAS
SI DIEU N’EXISTAIT PAS
SI DIEU N’EXISTAIT PAS
No one invents an absence:Cadmium yellow, duckweed, the capercaillie
- see how the hand we would name restrains itself
till all our stories end in monochrome;
the path through the meadow
reaching no logical end;
nothing but colour: bedstraw and ladies’ mantle;
nothing sequential; nothing as chapter and verse.
No one invents the quiet that runs in the grass,
the summer wind, the sky, the meadowlark;
and always the gift of the world, the undecided:
first light and damson blue ad infinitum.
© 2005, John Burnside
From: Times Literary Supplement
From: Times Literary Supplement
John Burnside
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1955)
John Burnside was born in Dunfermline, Fife, between the firths of Forth and Tay, in 1955. He lived in the English home counties and Gloucestershire before returning to Fife a few years ago. He studied English and European languages in Cambridge, and after working as a computer engineer became a fulltime writer; he also teaches at St Andrew’s University. He has won and been short-listed for sev...
Poems
Poems of John Burnside
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SI DIEU N’EXISTAIT PAS
No one invents an absence:Cadmium yellow, duckweed, the capercaillie
- see how the hand we would name restrains itself
till all our stories end in monochrome;
the path through the meadow
reaching no logical end;
nothing but colour: bedstraw and ladies’ mantle;
nothing sequential; nothing as chapter and verse.
No one invents the quiet that runs in the grass,
the summer wind, the sky, the meadowlark;
and always the gift of the world, the undecided:
first light and damson blue ad infinitum.
From: Times Literary Supplement
SI DIEU N’EXISTAIT PAS
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