Gedicht
Anthony Lawrence
The Black and Orange Dead
The Black and Orange Dead
The Black and Orange Dead
A cluster of ladybirds makes a detailfrom a cob of charred or blighted corn.
Separated,
they enamel any surface
like waterbeads
containing a matchhead’s reflected flare and death.
I part the leaves of the radish
and find carnage:
ladybirds, front legs
working into the sides of their heads
as if trying to prise tiny black helmets off,
the visors jammed with aphids
like stove-grills
wet ash has rendered useless.
Opening their wings, there are wings
beneath them:
an overcoat’s tails
flipped back to reveal
the tails of another, smaller coat.
I take a ladybird from a leaf, imagining myself
as I did picking green and orange cicadas
like loud, vibrating fruit from trees when young:
insect-sized,
held aloft by a giant,
pincered roughly
until the fluids broke from my eyes.
I hold it, because holding is what humans feel
they need to do to living things.
When I open my hand, it ambles
like a freckled naturalist
over the moist topography of my palm,
and I remember
a concert in a tree-lined square in Granada
at dusk: a woman fisting the silver
bellflower of a French horn; swallows
becoming their own shadows;
a ladybird negotiating the hairs on my arm.
Have you ever pressed the rim of an acorn’s cap
until the rim collapsed?
Perhaps it was
the last note from a clarinet
returning from the walls of a Gothic cathedral,
or swallows, angling for insects
like semi-quavers over the trees
that had distracted me . . .
I’d squeezed the beetle between finger and thumb –
my wet skin smelled of decay.
Here in the garden, vegetables
are being mined by green grubs
one stage from white, erratic flight.
The old-fashioned spray pump I steer
like the design for a blade-and-wingless aircraft
come to life,
is blowing pyrethrum
like burnt fuel over everything.
The grubs rise into death,
globes of milky fluid at the ends of their mouths;
the aphids mobilise, then fuse
into a wart-like mound, their sucking bodies
outnumbering the black and orange dead.
© 2002, Anthony Lawrence
From: Skinned by Light: Poems 1989-2002
Publisher: University of Queensland Press, St Lucia
From: Skinned by Light: Poems 1989-2002
Publisher: University of Queensland Press, St Lucia
Gedichten
Gedichten van Anthony Lawrence
Close
The Black and Orange Dead
A cluster of ladybirds makes a detailfrom a cob of charred or blighted corn.
Separated,
they enamel any surface
like waterbeads
containing a matchhead’s reflected flare and death.
I part the leaves of the radish
and find carnage:
ladybirds, front legs
working into the sides of their heads
as if trying to prise tiny black helmets off,
the visors jammed with aphids
like stove-grills
wet ash has rendered useless.
Opening their wings, there are wings
beneath them:
an overcoat’s tails
flipped back to reveal
the tails of another, smaller coat.
I take a ladybird from a leaf, imagining myself
as I did picking green and orange cicadas
like loud, vibrating fruit from trees when young:
insect-sized,
held aloft by a giant,
pincered roughly
until the fluids broke from my eyes.
I hold it, because holding is what humans feel
they need to do to living things.
When I open my hand, it ambles
like a freckled naturalist
over the moist topography of my palm,
and I remember
a concert in a tree-lined square in Granada
at dusk: a woman fisting the silver
bellflower of a French horn; swallows
becoming their own shadows;
a ladybird negotiating the hairs on my arm.
Have you ever pressed the rim of an acorn’s cap
until the rim collapsed?
Perhaps it was
the last note from a clarinet
returning from the walls of a Gothic cathedral,
or swallows, angling for insects
like semi-quavers over the trees
that had distracted me . . .
I’d squeezed the beetle between finger and thumb –
my wet skin smelled of decay.
Here in the garden, vegetables
are being mined by green grubs
one stage from white, erratic flight.
The old-fashioned spray pump I steer
like the design for a blade-and-wingless aircraft
come to life,
is blowing pyrethrum
like burnt fuel over everything.
The grubs rise into death,
globes of milky fluid at the ends of their mouths;
the aphids mobilise, then fuse
into a wart-like mound, their sucking bodies
outnumbering the black and orange dead.
From: Skinned by Light: Poems 1989-2002
The Black and Orange Dead
Sponsors
![Gemeente Rotterdam](/images/logo-GR_Basis_RGB_2021.png)
![Nederlands Letterenfonds](/images/logo-Nederlands-Letterenfonds-logo-RGB.png)
![Stichting Van Beuningen Peterich-fonds](/images/logo-stichting-van-beuningen-peterich-fonds.png)
![Prins Bernhard cultuurfonds](/images/cf_logo-zwart.png)
![Lira fonds](/images/logo-Lira_fond.png)
![Versopolis](/images/sponsors/logo_versopolis.png)
![J.E. Jurriaanse](/images/sponsors/logo_J_E_Jurriaanse_2020.png)
![Gefinancierd door de Europese Unie](/images/sponsors/logo_NL_fundedbyEU.png)
![Elise Mathilde Fonds](/images/sponsors/logo_EliseMathilde.png)
![Stichting Verzameling van Wijngaarden-Boot](/images/sponsors/logo_VanWijngaarden-Boot.png)
![Veerhuis](/images/sponsors/logo_Veerhuis_2.png)
![VDM](/images/sponsors/logo_VDM.png)
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère