Issue 3: Giles Goodland
Pastoral
Fixing things slowly, the spider spacewalks.
On petals' wet metal daybroken clouds
bleed and leave. Objects
are the same in being not the same, down to
roots in air, tongues, fibres.
A fencepost surfaces in a misty field.
When I move inside my clothes
the electricity is being
gathered in screens.
Crawling towards the sky,
the tree earths its fruit in us.
The grass at the miniature hour is brittle,
mathematical birds are not singing for you.
Brain is crumpled inside
and statements fall like crows, predominant
ash of person as the lyrical wind
bewilders the leaves.
The burnish grass and stalked birds
and trumpet-tongued flowers and livestock,
all alive, listening, are full of their meat.
Giles Goodland is the author of Capital (Salt, 2006), A Spy in the House of Years (Leviathan, 2001), Overlay (Odyssey, 1999) and Littoral (Oversteps, 1996). He lives in London and works in Oxford.
