Alice Oswald

Severed Head Floating Downriver

 
 
              It is said that after losing his wife, Orpheus was torn to
              pieces by Maenads, who threw his head into the River
              Hebron. The head went on singing and forgetting,
              filling up with water and floating way.
 
 
 
 
Eurydice                                                   already forgetting who she is
with her shoes missing
and the grass coming up through her feet
 
 
 
searching the earth
                         for the bracelet of tiny weave on her charcoal wrist
 
 
 
 
 
the name of a fly or flower             already forgetting who they are
they grow they grow
                      till their bodies break their necks
 
 
 
down there in the stone world
where the grey spirits of stones he around uncertain of their limits
matter is eating my mind                                I am in a river
 
 
 
                                          I in my fox-cap
floating between the speechless reeds
I always wake like this being watched
 
 
already forgetting who I am
the water wears my mask                              I call  I call
lying under its lashes like a glance
 
 
 
 
if only a child on a bridge would hoik me out
 
 
 
 
there comes a tremor and there comes a pause
 
 
 
 
down there in the underworld
where the tired stones have fallen
and the sand in a trance lifts a little
                        it is always midnight in those pools
 
 
 
iron insects engraved in sleep
 
 
 
                      I always wake like this being watched
 
 
 
I always speak to myself
                        no more myself but a colander
draining the sound from this never-to-be mentioned wound
 
 
 
can you hear it
you with your long shadows and your short shadows
 
 
 
 
 
can you hear the severed head of Orpheus
 
 
 
 
no I feel nothing from the neck down
 
 
 
already forgetting who I am
the crime goes on without volition singing in its bone
                      not I not I
                                               the water drinks my mind
 
 
 
 
as if in a black suit
                       as if bent to my books
                       only my face exists sliding over a waterfall
 
 
 
 
and there where the ferns hang over the dark
and the midges move between mirrors
some woman has left her shoes
                                                two crumpled mouths
                         which my voice searches in and out
 
 
 
 
my voice being water
which holds me together and also carries me away
until the facts forget themselves gradually like a contrail
 
 
 
and all this week
                       a lime-green hght troubles the riverbed
                       as if the mud was haunted by the wood
 
 
 
this is how the wind works hard at thinking
this is what speaks when no one speaks

from Falling Awake.

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