April 19, 2007: from Briggflatts, Basil Bunting
from Briggflatts
Basil Bunting
Furthest, fairest things, stars, free of our humbug,
each his own, the longer known the more alone,
wrapt in emphatic fire roaring out to a black flue.
Each spark trills on a tone beyond chronological compass,
yet in a sextant’s bubble present and firm
places a surveyor’s stone or steadies a tiller.
Then is Now. The star you steer by is gone,
its tremulous thread spun in the hurricane
spider floss on my check; light from the zenith
spun when the slowworm lay in her lap
fifty years ago.
The sheets are gathered and bound,
the volume indexed and shelved,
dust on its marbled leaves.
Lofty, an empty combe,
silent but for bees.
Finger tips touched and were still
fifty years ago.
Sirius is too young to remember.
Sirius glows in the wind. Sparks on ripples
mark his line, lures for spent fish.
Fifty years a letter unanswered;
a visit postponed for fifty years.
She has been with me fifty years.
Starlight quivers. I had day enough.
For love uninterrupted night.
[This is the very end of Briggflatts, Basil Bunting’s long, autobiographical poem about a girl he loved and left. Bunting was really into poetry as an audible, spoken art form, so all the sounds he uses are very deliberate, and grounded in the accent of Northern England (he had some hilariously strong views on the loss of the letter ‘r’ in Southern accents). You can hear him reading a different poem, “At Briggflatts meetinghouse,” here to get a sense of it.
He said: “Poetry, like music, is to be heard. It deals in sound… Reading in silence is the source of half the misconceptions that have caused the public to distrust poetry.” Also he was a SPY!]
More like this:
What the Chairman Told Tom, Basil Bunting
To Tanya on my Sixtieth Birthday, Wendell Berry
A year ago: The Chores, Frannie Lindsay
Two years ago: Direct Address, Joan Larkin
