BY LIGHT ALONE
for Tom Patterson
In every movement there is always stillness:
bear in mind the arrow is transformed in flight,
remember how the sharpest knife cuts safest.
And the patience taken making things that can’t
be seen by light alone, to leave a blank page
with a perfect letter, nothing more or less.
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ANTHONY ADLER is the editor of Hatstand Books. He has performed at the Barbican, the Southbank Centre, and Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club.
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Read more by Anthony Adler:
Poem at the Poetry Society
Poem at Young British Poets Blog
Poem at Pomegranate
Another poem at Pomegranate
He sang /
like a gas station on a black summer night.
you stand a long time /
by the creek, then /
feed it two pennies, /
one for you, one /
for the love /
inside you that /
you can do nothing /
with or about.
A talisman against the agony /
in his knees and hips //
for which he was taking /
black-market fentanyl
I greet your gliding flight O wings of death / But there are other signs too
realizing that the horizon is a line constituting an intersection between at least two systems, the inner and the outer one. Between an observer on the move and the roads within the landscape ...
the story / the two white women will not retract, despite the fact /
that inside each story we tell another writes itself
the intoxicating ministry of dusk, the anchor of daylight lifting, sheets white / like a freshly crushed pill, // the vortex of the body and the clap of the / coral tongue...
Before we go any further, I want to publicly acknowledge //
that I love every person in this room. I mean it. /
We’ve traveled from all over to be here, and I love /
each of you, all of you, every last one of you, except /
Harold
I tithe 10% of my new underwear to my future /
self, the one who has fallen in love.
Along one river fell /
all the luck in the world.
