Oswald - Falling Awake

BY THE SAME AUTHOR POETRY The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile Dart Woods etc. A Sleepwalk on the Severn Weeds and Wild Flowers Memorial EDITOR The Thunder Mutters: 101 Poems for the Planet Thomas Wyatt: Selected Poems FALLING AWAKE Alice Oswald Copyright 2016 by Alice Oswald First American Edition 2016 All rights reserved For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact
W. W. Norton Special Sales at specialsales@wwnorton.com or 800-233-4830 The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Names: Oswald, Alice, 1966- author.

Title: Falling awake / Alice Oswald. Description: First American edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. W. W.

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FALLING AWAKE It is the story of the falling rain to turn into a leaf and fall again it is the secret of a summer shower to steal the light and hide it in a flower and every flower a tiny tributary that from the ground flows green and momentary is one of waters wishes and this tale hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail if only I a passerby could pass as clear as water through a plume of grass to find the sunlight hidden at the tip turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip then I might know like water how to balance the weight of hope against the light of patience water which is so raw so earthy-strong and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along drawn under gravity towards my tongue to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song which is the story of the falling rain that rises to the light and falls again A rotted swan is hurrying away from the plane-crash mess of her wings one here one there getting panicky up out of her clothes and mid-splash looking down again at what a horrible plastic mould of herself split-second climbing out of her own cockpit and lifting away again and bending back for another look thinking strange strange what are those two white clips that connected my strength to its floatings and lifting away again and bending back for another look at the clean china serving-dish of a breast bone and how thickly the symmetrical quill-points were threaded in backwards through the leather underdress of the heart saying strange strange its not as if such fastenings could ever contain the regular yearning wing-beat of my evenings and that surely cant be my own black feet lying poised in their slippers what a waste of detail what a heaviness inside each feather and leaving her life and all its tools with their rusty juices trickling back to the river she is lifting away she is taking a last look thinking quick quick say something to the frozen cloud of the head before it thaws whose one dead eye is a growing cone of twilight in the middle of winter it is snowing there and the bride has just set out to walk to her wedding but how can she reach the little black-lit church it is so cold the bells like iron angels hung from one note keep ringing and ringing This is the day the flies fall awake mid-sentence and lie stunned on the window-sill shaking with speeches only it isnt speech it is trembling sections of puzzlement which break off suddenly as if the questioner had been shot this is one of those wordy days when they drop from their winter quarters in the curtains and sizzle as they fall feeling like old cigarette butts called back to life blown from the surface of some charred world and somehow their wings which are little more than flakes of dead skin have carried them to this blackened disembodied question what dirt shall we visit today? what dirt shall we re-visit? they lift their faces to the past and walk about a bit trying out their broken thought-machines coming back with their used-up words there is such a horrible trapped buzzing wherever we fly its going to be impossible to think clearly now until next winter what should we what dirt should we I heard a cough as if a thief was there outside my sleep a sharp intake of air a fox in her fox-fur stepping across the grass in her black gloves barked at my house just so abrupt and odd the way she went hungrily asking in the hearts thick accent in such serious sleepless trespass she came a woman with a mans voice but no name as if to say: its midnight and my life is laid beneath my children like gold leaf 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 away. Eurydicealready 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 floweralready 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 lie around uncertain of their limits matter is eating my mindI 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 maskI callI 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 light 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 I notice a cold streak I notice it in the sun all that dazzling stubbornness of keeping to its clock I notice the fatigue of flowers weighed down by light I notice the lark has a needle pulled through its throat why dont they put down their instruments? I notice they never pause I notice the dark sediment of their singing covers the moors like soot blown under a doorway almost everything here has cold hands I notice the wind wears surgical gloves I notice the keen pale colours of the rain like a surgeons assistant why dont they lift their weight and see whats flattened underneath it? I notice the thin meticulous grass, thrives in this place This is what happened the dead were settling in under their mud roof and something was shuffling overhead it was a badger treading on the thin partition bewildered were the dead going about their days and nights in the dark putting their feet down carefully and finding themselves floating but that badger still with the simple heavy box of his body needing to be lifted was shuffling away alive hard at work with the living shovel of himself into the lane he dropped not once looking up and missed the sight of his own corpse falling like a suitcase towards him with the grin like an opened zip (as I found it this morning) and went on running with that bindweed will of his went on running along the hedge and into the earth again trembling as if in a broken jug for one backwards moment water might keep its shape I who can blink to break the spell of daylight and what a sliding screen between worlds is a blink I who can hear the last three seconds in my head but the present is beyond me listen in this tiny moment of reflexion I want to work out what its like to descend out of the dawns mind and find a leaf and fasten the known to the unknown with a liquid cufflink and then unfasten to be brief to be almost actual oh pristine example of claiming a place on the earth only to cancel Im going to flicker for a moment and tell you the tale of a shadow that falls at dusk out of the blue to the earth and turns left along the path to here groggily under its black-out being dragged along crippled over things as if broken-winged not yet continuous no more than a shiver of something with the flesh parachute of a human opening above it but lengthening a little as it descends through the rings of one hour into the next with the rooks flying upwards snipping at the clouds until at last out of that opening here it lies my own impersonal pronoun crumpled under me like a dead body it is faint it has been falling for a long time look when I walk its like a pair of scissors thrown at me by the sun so that now as if my skin were not quite tucked in I am cold cold trying to slide myself out of my own shade but hour by hour more shade leaks out or if I stand if I move one hand I hear the hiss of flowers closing their eyelids and the trees as if dust was being beaten from a rug shake out their birds and in again its as if Ive interrupted something that was falling in a straight line from the eye of God and if I do nothing the ground gives up the almost minty clarity of its grass begins to fade the white moths under the leaves are amazed Somebody out late again say what you like sinister walk throwing one foot forward black jumble-sale clothes with a bit of string around the knees going over the mud with a tread like that throwing one foot forward somebody out not back being out again walking every evening as regular as the rooks throwing one foot forward so many names in this place are you listening taking his bucket to the tap John Strong thats him bursting full of himself hook-nosed sinister walk scars on each side of the wrist no teeth not known for his beauty having been shot in the mouth black jumble-sale clothes [...] somebody out thankfully not me out lost in the mud somebody lost out late again say what you like a boot by the granite trough not many of us left living in the slippery maybe the last green places are you listening not many of us left not much movement in the blackening lanes among a few low trees little flocks of orchids in the ditches nobody cares its as dark as a pond down here we could do with a hedge-flail with a scythe somebody with a scythe you can hear him smashing through six-foot nettles black jumble-sale clothes with a bit of string around the knees so as the rats wont run up his legs are you listening Thomas Lytch thats him in the rain now somebody with a tread like that very chilblain slow with a lump on his toe just saw him on the way back home again mud in his mouth [...] I said the dirt gets right into your fingers living under the trees like this the toads dont mind it this is gods honest truth theres one about as big as a bucket hops out of the nettles every night you can say what you like thats him slugging about the village bent-headed heavily laden with the cold you can tell its him spillikin legs always wet for some reason always poking the verges looking for a tasty bit of nothing always wet for some reason always standing like a bale in the rain remembering better times whereas naming no names some of us would rather not remember something some of us have got enough bloody nightmares already somebody a bundle of nerves ever since the wall came down wont barely go out of the church now ever since a bat swooped in like a pair of leather gloves feeling her face had to dive under the pews for cover this is gods honest truth Joyce Jones just heard her voice again say what you like cold nights without streetlights walking to the sea perhaps on the soft of her feet with a stout stick why [...] somebody out peering out not me red face at the window regular every evening not noted for his warmth this is gods honest truth not noted for his warmth no wife somebody out late talking in the street not many of us left no shop long weeds in the hedges its as dull as a pond down here what a hiss in the throat having been gassed in the war that voice is are you listening is that somebodys bed-ridden red face peering out wont barely go out of the house now is that smoke are they burning the trees again say what you like she wont like that not many of us left so many names in this place not many of us left living on the last we can find can you hear this somebody out peering out not me noticed the least likely the very soul of respectability eating something in the cemetery not rats I hope are you listening listen somebodys sister the very soul of respectability without one word of a lie just this very morning being in her slippers having recently put out the trash had the misfortune to die over the dustbins in the snow Lyn Waters of course somebody had to shift her say what you like just saw him with a grim look put her in the car boot cold as a trout with a bit of green silk around the middle to protect against rheumatism [...] somebody as barely there as light as a lace curtain lying in the nettles with her teeth upwards couldnt lift herself been living off nettles for a week hence the expression somebody on her knees again not what she was somebody screaming again last night being strangled or something good grief you get used to the sounds not many of us left living on the fluff of green of the last little floes of the earth May I shuffle forward and tell you the two-minute life of rain starting right now lips open and lidless-cold all-seeing gaze when something not yet anything changes its mind like me and begins to fall in the small hours and the light is still a flying carpet only a little white between worlds like an eye opening after an operation no turning back each drop is a snap decision a suicide from the tower-block of heaven and for the next ten seconds the rain stares at the ground sees me stirring here as if sculpted in porridge sees the garden in the green of its mind already drinking and the grass lengthening stalls maybe a thousand feet above me a kind of yellowness or levity like those tiny alterations that brush the legs of swimmers lifts the rain a little to the left no more than a flash of free-will until the clouds close their options and the whole melancholy air surrenders to pure fear and falls and I who live in the basement one level down from the world with my eyes to the insects with my ears to the roots listening I feel them in my bones these dead straight lines coming closer and closer to my core this is the sound this is the very floor where Grief and his Wife are living looking up Clouds: I can watch their films in puddles passionate and slow without obligations of shape or stillness I can stand with wilted neck and look directly into the drowned corpse of a cloud it is cold-blooded down there precisely outlined as if under a spell and it narrows to a weighted point which throws back darkness oh yes there is a trembling rod that hangs my head above puddles and the clouds like trapped smoke wander under me and the sun lies discarded on the tarmac like an old white shoe dont go on about those other clouds those high pre-historic space-ferns that steam the windows of the wind I know I could look up and see them curled like fossils in the troposphere but I am here I have been leaning here a long time hunched under the bone lintel of my stare with the whole sky dropped and rippling through my eye and now a crow on a glass lens slides through the earth Weeding alongside beans in the same rush as them 6 a.m. scrabbling at the earth beans synchronised in rows soft fanatical irresponsible beans behind my back breaking out of their mass grave at first, just a rolled-up flag then a bayonet a pair of gloved hands then a shocked corpse hurrying up in prayer and then another and then (as if a lock had gone and the Spring had broken loose) a hoverfly not looking up but lost in pause landing its full-stop on a bean leaf (and what a stomach bursting from its straps what a nervous readiness attached to its lament and using the sound as a guard rail over the drop) and then another and after a while a flower turning its head to the side like a bored emperor and after a while a flower singing out a faint line of scent and spinning around the same obsession with its task and working with the same bewitched slightly off-hand look as the sea covering first one place and then another and after a while another place and then another place and another and another Amphibious vagueness neither pool nor land under whose velvet three rivers spring to their tasks in whose indecent hills tired of my voice I followed the advice of water knelt and put my mouth to a socket in the grass as if to an outlet of my own unveiled stoneliness and sleepless flight they say the herons used to hang like lamps here giving off gloom now walkers float on the wings of their macs to this weephole where you can taste almost not water exactly Three people in the snow getting rid of themselves breath by breath and every six seconds a blackbird three people in raincoats losing their tracks in the snow walking as far as the edge and back again with the trees exhausted tapping at the sky and every six seconds a blackbird first three then two passing one eye between them and the eye is a white eraser rubbing them away and on the edge a blackbird trying over and over its broken line trying over and over its broken line Very small and damaged and quite dry, a Roman water nymph made of bone tries to summon a river out of limestone very eroded faded her left arm missing and both legs from the knee down a Roman water nymph made of bone tries to summon a river out of limestone exhaustedutterly worn down a Roman water nymph made of bone being the last known speaker of her language she tries to summon a river out of limestone little distant sound of dry grasstry again a Roman water nymph made of bone very endangered now in a largely unintelligible monotone she tries to summon a river out of limestone little distant sound as of dry grasstry again exquisite bone figurine with upturned urn in her passionate self-esteem she smiles looking sideways she seemingly has no voice but a throat-clearing rustle as of dry grasstry again she tries leaning pouring pure outwardness out of a grey urn little slithering sounds as of a rabbit man in full night-gear, who lies so low in the rickety willowherb that a fox trots out of the woods and over his back and awaytry again she tries leaning pouring pure outwardness out of a grey urn little lapping soundsyes as of dry grass secretly drinkingtry again little lapping soundsyes as of dry grass secretly drinkingtry again Roman bone figurine year after year in a sealed glass case having lost the hearing of her surroundings she struggles to summon a river out of limestone little shuffling sound as of approaching slippers year after year in a sealed glass case a Roman water nymph made of bone she struggles to summon a river out of limestone little shuffling sound as of a nearly dried-up woman not really moving through the fields having had the gleam taken out of her to the point where she resembles twilighttry again little shuffling clicking she opens the door of the church little distant sounds of shut-away singingtry again little whispering fidgeting of a shut-away congregation wondering who to pray to little patter of eyes closingtry again very small and damaged and quite dry a Roman water nymph made of bone she pleads she pleads a river out of limestone little hobbling tripping of a nearly dried-up river not really moving through the fields, having had the gleam taken out of it to the point where it resembles twilight. little grumbling shivering last-ditch attempt at a river more nettles than watertry again very speechless very broken old woman her left arm missing and both legs from the knee down she tries to summon a river out of limestone little stoved-in sucked thin low-burning glint of stones rough-sleeping and trembling and clinging to its rights victim of Swindon puddle midden slum of over-greened foot-churn and pats whose crayfish are cheap tool-kits made of the mud stirred up when a stones lifted its a pitiable likeness of clear running struggling to keep up with whats already gone the boat the wheel the sluice gate the two otters larricking alonggo on and they say oh they say in the days of better rainfall it would flood through five valleys thered be cows and milking stools washed over the garden walls and when it froze you could skate for five milesyes go on little loose end shorthand unrepresented beautiful disused route to the sea fish path with nearly no fish in I own the dawn! the cockerel claims. The light still loiters with intent to take the night.