not language but a map

keep yourself in check

I didn’t realise that you wrote poetry
I didn’t realise you wrote such bloody awful poetry

and

I’m sorry the world could not possibly
use another poem about Orpheus

can’t get there from here, won’t try

The Old Gods

Now they are condemned
to live in cracks,
in bubbles of plaster and rust,
and spiders’ webs
behind the furniture:

speaking a derelict language
to empty space,
sealed with the vapour
in bottles, closed in the blown
robins’ eggs
in some abandoned loft.

Each has its given power.
Each has its hearth, its secret,
its local name,
and each has its way of learning
the skill of return,
the science of bleeding through, when anger or fear
is fuzzing the surface,
making us dizzy and whole.

— John Burnside