I Walked Through the Ash-cloaked Field
I walked through the ash-cloaked field
Collecting fragments from a former life
Naming and grouping the ruin I found there
Rounded gray-white stones Twined
handfuls of long grass Water Slow-moving
water Low-lying unscented
flowers Cruelty Scented flowers
Winter evenings of unbearable duration
Impossible duration Coolness The Cold
Slow-moving underground water
A framed portrait of an unfamiliar face
The cold unfeeling face of an unknown
love A love realized A love squandered
Bedlinens The wish for a different kind
of body A different world for that body
to cherish and avoid The call-note
of disappearance sounding through night
wind Sharp terrible and piercing
wind Glass Underground water
The underneath under underground water
Tomorrow Yesterday Never Always
Reams of paper Empty shelves And ink.
Integration Was Not Longed For Perhaps
Integration was not longed for Perhaps
a tightening of articulation Of residing
in the remainder Fucking antecedents.
In the World Listening Various
In the world Listening Various
and conflicting sounds thrash
against the air’s currents
Sounds closer to noise or
Lamentation
Scrim-Like and Heavy
Such that sight itself appeared
then not as earnest rubbing But
As labor If not
A Different Kind of Song.
Sparrow Murray is a writer, editor, artist, and educator. She is the recipient of the 2024 Stanley and Evelyn Lipkin Prize for Poetry, selected by Chessy Normile. Her writing is featured in The Brooklyn Rail, Dialogist, and elsewhere. She produces Poetry Unbound and lives in Brooklyn, New York.