The Beast in the Space

James McBey

The Beast in the Space

Shut up. Shut up. There’s nobody here.
If you think you hear somebody knocking
On the other side of the words, pay
No attention. It will be only
The great creature that thumps its tail
On silence on the other side.
If you do not even hear that
I’ll give the beast a quick skelp

And through Art you’ll hear it yelp.
The beast that lives on silence takes
Its bite out of either side.
It pads and sniffs between us. Now
It comes and laps my meaning up.
Call it over. Call it across
This curious necessary space.
Get off, you terrible inhabiter
Of silence. I’ll not have it. Get
Away to whoever it is will have you.
He’s gone and if he’s gone to you
That’s fair enough. For on this side
Of the words it’s late. The heavy moth
Bangs on the pane. The whole house
Is sleeping and I remember
I am not here, only the space
I sent the terrible beast across.
Watch. He bites. Listen gently
To any song he snorts or growls
And give him food. He means neither
Well or ill towards you. Above
All, shut up. Give him your love.

W.S. Graham 

 

Sitting down to write, and sometimes even before that, I feel this Beast, this Resistance.

There is always a Something that fights me trying to speak truly.

"The beast that lives on silence."  What clear description!

There is Something that wants to shush me. A beast of prey, as Graham writes.

Do I hunt him? Do I hide? How do I get by his lair?

 

Me, I dash in blind. I run at the writing. As fast as I can, I get it down, and run back to safety.

 

Maybe I'll learn a better way, when I'm stronger.

 

I'm building up my strength.

 

 

 

Eleven Horseman

Kobayashi Kiyochika

Eleven horsemen riding through a night
Of swirling snow: none looks to left or right.

Shiki

fr. A Net of Fireflies
translated by Harold Stewart

Fifteen words - !

Fifteen words containing endless possibiities.

Ice

 

 

Robert Strong Woodward

  

Ice

 

Her house is armed to the teeth. Icicles bristle

above my head as I shiver at her door.

One lackadaisical arrow drops.

She's locked in behind winter's 

glassy portcullis.

 

The river's a white road now. As I set foot it groans

as if under a hundred trundling cartwheels.

A crack zigzags across the surface

and I am plunged through the shell

into slush-water.

 

Oat-husks and thistles, a crop of frost in the snowfields.

There is a clear glue hardening on my walls,

clutching my fingertip like birdlime.

From now on nothing will move

but the skidding wind.

 

Matthew Francis

fr. The Green Month: Poems After Daffydd ap Gwilym 

 

He could've said, 

 "It was cold out, and an icicle nearly brained me while I was waiting for Alice to answer the door. The river is frozen although I went through in one spot and got my feet wet." 

He could've made the complaint, 

 "The damp on my walls is turned to ice now, and the wind never stops."

 And be true, accurate, even precise.

 

Instead, he gives us other facets of those same qualities. 

 

Instead, he chooses words which call up a sense of of old chivalry, of besieged castles, he gives us a glimpse of the possible story he (and we with him) is part of, or partaking of. 

He takes us on a walk, but notices that there are more paths than one. The landscape he lives in makes new ways out of itself - the river becomes a way.

And there are harvests to be gathered from what is not usually a source of food.

Weathers, landscapes, objects - all these have different facets when held up to the light, when examined, tasted, tried. All these are transfigured by the eye that sees their possibles, and that gives the possibles words. 

The poet is not "creating", he is revealing, he is showing the realities which are already there.

 

They are all there! 

Here!