Tuesday, May 26, 2009

News at Eleven: Reticence and a lack of presumption

are natural partners, and can work well together, as at the close of "A Goodnight Kiss", where "kiss-kiss is the sound of her black sandals/making peace with the earth then taking leave of it". Best of all, arguably, is the poem "Diagnosis", where long summer daylight over Scapa Flow brings together unsleeping gulls and an insomniac speaker, who must "keep watching waves/slosh to and fro over the dead ships", but who is actually seeing more than might be apparent:

they cannot see you as I do, alive
in your illness and walking on the water,
but disappearing whenever the light shifts
and the sea beneath reveals itself again.

from The Times Literary Supplement: Andrew Motion's poetic pains

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