after Martin Harrison, after Michel Deguy
The words are a silver lake,
the wind blows a nova into your arms.
When I wrote, buds
of music opened in your reading.
There’s no escape,
no one else will understand.
The sound of my own sky
falls on fields of withered flowers.
I return to speak with a drum
of your death, the only sound
(the years are a remnant forest)
is a voice from the deep.
Someone kicks a stone in the street.
I am falling, what
if the rain could fall,
make your grave green in my arms.
Stuart Cooke is a poet, scholar and translator. His next poetry collection, Lyre, is forthcoming with UWAP. He lectures in creative writing and literary studies at Griffith University.
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