Circle Game Read Online Free PDF

the eye.
    Yet, standing on the cliff
(the two
of us)
on our bigger island,
looking,
    we find it pleasing
(it soothes our instinct for
symmetry, proportion,
for company perhaps)
    that there are two of them.

Letters, Towards and Away
    i
    It is not available to us
it
is not available, I said
closing my hours against you.
    I live in a universe
mostly paper.
I make tents
from cancelled stamps.
    Letters
are permitted but
don’t touch me, I’d
crumple
    I said
    everything depends on you
    staying away.
    ii
    I didn’t want you to be
visible.
    How could you invade
me when
I ordered you not
to
    Leave my evasions
alone
stay in the borders
I’ve drawn, I wrote, but
    you twisted your own wide spaces
    and made them include me.
    iii
    You came easily into my house
and without being asked
washed the dirty dishes,
    because you don’t find
my forms of chaos,
inverted midnights
and crusted plates,
congenial:
    restoring some kind of
daily normal order.
    Not normal for me:
    I live in a house where
beautiful clean dishes
aren’t important
    enough.
    iv
    Love is an awkward word
    Not what I mean and
too much like magazine stories
in stilted dentists’
waiting rooms.
How can anyone use it?
    I’d rather say
I like your
lean spine
or your eyebrows
or your shoes
    but just by standing there and
being awkward
    you force me to speak
    love.
    v
    You collapse my house of cards
merely by breathing
    making other places
with your hands on wood, your
feet on sand
    creating with such
generosity, mountains, distances
empty beach and rocks and sunlight
as you walk
so calmly into the sea
    and returning, you
taste of salt,
    and put together my own
body, another
    place
    for me to live
in.
    vi
    I don’t wear gratitude
well. Or hats.
    What would I do with
veils and silly feathers
or a cloth rose
growing from the top of my head?
    What should I do with this
peculiar furred emotion?
    vii
    What you invented
what you
destroyed
with your transient hands
    you did so gently
I didn’t notice at the time
    but where is all that wall-
paper?
    Now
I’m roofless:
    the sky
you built for me is too
open.
    Quickly,
send me some more letters.

A Place: Fragments
    i
    Here on the rim, cringing
under the cracked whip of winter
we live
in houses of ice,
but not because we want to:
in order to survive
we make what we can and have to
with what we have.
    ii
    Old woman I visited once
out of my way
in a little-visited province:
    she had a neat
house, a clean parlour
though obsolete and poor:
    a cushion with a fringe;
glass animals arranged
across the mantlepiece (a swan, a horse,
a bull); a mirror;
a teacup sent from Scotland;
several heraldic spoons;
a lamp; and in the centre
of the table, a paperweight:
hollow glass globe
filled with water, and
a house, a man, a snowstorm.
    The room was as
dustless as possible
and free of spiders.
    Â Â Â I
    stood in the door-
way, at the fulcrum where
    this trivial but
stringent inner order
held its delicate balance
with the random scattering or
clogged merging of
things: ditch by the road; dried
reeds in the wind; flat
wet bush, grey sky
sweeping away outside.
    iii
    The cities are only outposts.
    Watch that man
walking on cement as though on snowshoes:
senses the road
a muskeg, loose mat of roots and brown
vegetable decay
or crust of ice that
easily might break and
slush or water under
suck him down
    The land flows like a
sluggish current.
    The mountains eddy slowly towards the sea.
    iv
    The people who come here also
flow: their bodies becoming
nebulous, diffused, quietly
spreading out into the air across
these interstellar sidewalks
    v
    This is what it must be
like in outer space
where the stars are pasted flat
against the total
black of the expanding
eye, fly-
specks of burning dust
    vi
    There is no centre;
the centres
travel with us unseen
like our shadows
on a day when there is no sun.
    We must move back:
there are too many foregrounds.
    Now, clutter of twigs
across our eyes, tatter
of birds at the eye’s