Circle Game Read Online Free PDF Page A

finally
we spoke
the sounds of our voices fell
into the air single and
solid and rounded and really
there
and then dulled, and then like sounds
gone, a fistful of gathered
pebbles there was no point
in taking home, dropped on a beachful
of other coloured pebbles
    and when we turned to go
a flock of small
birds flew scattered by the
fright of our sudden moving
and disappeared: hard
    sea pebbles
thrown solid for an instant
against the sky
    flight of words
    iii) Carved Animals
    The small carved
animal is passed from
hand to hand
around the circle
until the stone grows warm
    touching, the hands do not know
the form of animal
which was made or
the true form of stone
uncovered
    and the hands, the fingers the
hidden small bones
of the hands bend to hold the shape,
shape themselves, grow
cold with the stone’s cold, grow
also animal, exchange
until the skin wonders
if stone is human
    In the darkness later
and even when the animal
has gone, they keep
the image of that
inner shape
    hands holding warm
hands holding
the half-formed air

Pre-Amphibian
    Again so I subside
nudged by the softening
driftwood of your body
tangle on you like a water-
weed caught
on a submerged treelimb
    with sleep like a swamp
growing, closing around me
sending its tendrils through the brown
sediments of darkness
where we transmuted are
part of this warm rotting
of vegetable flesh
this quiet spawning of roots
    released
from the lucidities of day
when you are something I can
trace a line around, with eyes
cut shapes
from air, the element
where we
must calculate according to
solidities
    but here I blur
into you our breathing sinking
to green millenniums
and sluggish in our blood
all ancestors
are warm fish moving
    The earth
shifts, bringing
the moment before focus, when
these tides recede; and we
see each other through the
hardening scales of waking
    stranded, astounded
in a drying world
    we flounder, the air
ungainly in our new lungs
with sunlight steaming merciless on the shores of morning

Against Still Life
    Orange in the middle of a table:
    It isn’t enough
to walk around it
at a distance, saying
it’s an orange:
nothing to do
with us, nothing
else: leave it alone
    I want to pick it up
in my hand
I want to peel the
skin off; I want
more to be said to me
than just Orange:
want to be told
everything it has to say
    And you, sitting across
the table, at a distance, with
your smile contained, and like the orange
in the sun: silent:
    Your silence
isn’t enough for me
now, no matter with what
contentment you fold
your hands together; I want
anything you can say
in the sunlight:
    stories of your various
childhoods, aimless journeyings,
your loves; your articulate
skeleton; your posturings; your lies.
    These orange silences
(sunlight and hidden smile)
make me want to
wrench you into saying;
now I’d crack your skull
like a walnut, split it like a pumpkin
to make you talk, or get
a look inside
    But quietly:
if I take the orange
with care enough and hold it
gently
    I may find
an egg
a sun
an orange moon
perhaps a skull; centre
of all energy
resting in my hand
    can change it to
whatever I desire
it to be
    and you, man, orange afternoon
lover, wherever
you sit across from me
(tables, trains, buses)
    if I watch
quietly enough
and long enough
    at last, you will say
(maybe without speaking)
    (there are mountains
inside your skull
garden and chaos, ocean
and hurricane; certain
corners of rooms, portraits
of great-grandmothers, curtains
of a particular shade;
your deserts; your private
dinosaurs; the first
woman)
    all I need to know:
tell me
everything
just as it was
from the beginning.

The Islands
    There are two of them:
    One larger, with steep granite
cliffs facing us, dropping sheer
to the deep lake;
    the other smaller, closer
to land, with a reef running
out from it and dead trees
grey, waist-high in the water.
    We know they are alone
and always will be.
    The lake takes care of that
and if it went,
they would be hills
and still demand
separateness
from