BLOOD MONTH
This is where summer ends – with a harvest moon
rising like a burning disk. Clouds pass
like smoke and shadowy leaves fall like tears.
We will reverse the clocks – and the dread
of darkness comes, the long melancholy,
the dark bile of desolate marshes, of fogs
and a pale sun setting.
Howard Gardener
October 23, 2015Very sombre, David. I think that this poem is in need of ‘The Singing Selzers’ from the next one . . .
Alan Horne
October 29, 2015I liked this, David, partly because it worked well (for me) when read aloud. Although the images of darkness reminded me of Kathleen Jamie’s chapter ‘Darkness and Light’ in her prose book FINDINGS, where she argues for a positive re-evaluation of the dark, as something enfolding, perhaps maternal. The poem has a real shift of feeling around “we will reverse the clocks” – very powerful.
John Huddart
November 3, 2015I agree with Alan about the key importance of reversing the clocks – because the poem pitches into its most powerful and impressive part, straight afterwards. It may be gloomy winter, but it fires the imagination.