Bird
Lamp in paperfields
and in the sky, a compression of long halls.
Do you know how sudden you are
how sad? Sadness being air
or soft fly of a thing
over dark houses.
The sad dying voice of the bird
is my dying voice
We are the poem – Look
our heads, tongues
drag with the old clock.
This is how it has to be.
The shadows dancing on the eaves
know our trick
of being one thing
Bird
when you lower the lamp
of your voice
my mouth rises to its light,
I dilate under your finger-tones,
if you fall the moon will step down
and hold you close.
Helen Calcutt is an English poet choreographer and dance artist. Associated with the traditions of European verse, her work has received global publication, featuring in journals such as Equinox , The London Magazine, The Salzburg Review, Poetry Scotland, and The New Yorker. She is founder of radical contemporary project écriture corporelle – a ‘bodily writing’ which launched at the internationally acclaimed Poetry International Festival in July 2014. The project is set to tour extensively across the UK in 2015. She is the author of Sudden rainfall her first collection of poetry, published by experimental English publishing house Perdika Press. http://helencalcutt.org/