Phil Powrie’s ‘The night that takes our shape’, an ‘evocative, melancholy and beautiful’ poem is a much deserved Pick of the Month for October 2017. This dark and haunting poem struck a chord with many who felt it was one for our times; its reach even went as far as Charlottesville in the US.
Phil writes books on French cinema, and teaches cinema and French at a university in the south of the UK. He has published poetry in South.
The night that takes our shape
afraid to abandon behind us the night that takes our shape
holding our candles like flickering flags
here am I a soldier here a priest each with a weapon
you march you pray in a patch of light
your limbs pull away like garlands
offered lightly to the clock’s lazy eyes
your hands clasp around mine
and you sing come dance with me come dance again
and march and pray
to hold the night at bay
to keep abstracted dark forever from the field
more than what we lost we regret what we never had
and dark shapes come to haunt us
marching and praying with their unbearable battalions
Voters’ comments included:
It is beautiful, so personal and yet so much about our times.
the candles in the night make me think of protests, Nazis with torches, counter protesters (this vote is from Charlottesville). I feel the darkness.
Elegant, succinct, evokes a clear image…
For its mood, and the melancholic form of dim extinguishing.
A refined and all at once unsettling use of the sonnet form
It’s beautifully compressed and suggestive — a small gem.
A powerfully evocative poem , tight, bare and visual
a moving poem, especially the way it sustains the multiple metaphor of darkness
the way it moves through night-time images, sensations and feelings like the mutable shadows one sees in the dark, like a dream.
powerful shifting imagery that avoids the predictable relationships that often render poems staid and overly familiar in their metaphorical usage.
lovely dark poem that fits our dark times and remind us of the need not to despair
I love the beautiful language and the carefully developed metaphors of the soldier and the priest.
An intriguing, suggestive, atmospheric piece of writing that lingers in the mind and repays close attention and rethinking.
…It spoke to me, especially the verse ‘more than what we lost we regret what we never had’. It evoked a friendship I recently lost, or better said never managed to have. This is very true.
A stirring evocation of the paradoxes of night and darkness–rebirth, certainly, but also mourning and loss.
This is a lovely poem that merges images of faith, war, and love.