LA ALPUJARRA
​

you must travel upwards
into emptiness

far from the unremitting
thoughts

and drilling eyes
of others

here in the high mountains

in their cold
clean passes

transmission is possible:

tutelary voices from
elemental and other

unnamed forces

​
​Excerpt from "You Came to Me" in Ajar To The Night, 
​Scarlet Imprint, 2020


​YOU CAME TO ME
​

you came to me as a song
that I could not sing

it broke the branches
of the tree in which I rested

it broke my rest


~


you came to me as a torch
that devoured me

I was relieved of leaves
and left with blood-
brightness and with thorns


~


you come to me now
as a wind that assails me
with fury and with salt

to purify the wounds of my
own making


~


you are a horn
lifted to the sky

a howl piercing the blue
cells of the air


. . .


I feel you as a current

as dark, as sinuous, as
a cormorant slipping through
the belly of the sea


~


in the caverns of the earth
I recognised you

and in the veins
of smoke of birch


~


you are the dweller inside
the atria of hills


~


I lower myself through
oesophageal stones

into dens of scent


~


sightless, seeking bulb
and frond

I lift from unlit passages
medicines proliferating
in darkness