Severed Head Floating Downriver, 2016

Alice Oswald, British, born 1966 

from Falling Awake, 2016

 

It is said that after losing his wife, Orpheus was torn to pieces by Maenads, who threw his head into the River Hebron. The head went on singing and forgetting, filling up with water and floating away.

 

 

 

Eurydice      already forgetting who she is

with her shoes missing

and the grass coming up through her feet

 

 

 

The white lady in a friend’s garden, Olive, NY.  With loving thanks.

 

 

 

searching the earth

                                   for the bracelet of tiny weave on her charcoal wrist

 

 

Japanese primula, Mt. Cuba, Delaware, 2019. Legacy of the du Pont Copelands

 

 

the name of a fly or flower             already forgetting who they are

they grow they grow

 

 

 

Flame azalea, Winterthur, Delaware. Legacy of Henry Francis du Pont

 

 

     till their bodies break their necks

 

Philadelphia Flower Show in who knows which year!

 

 

 

down there in the stone world

where the grey spirits of stones he around uncertain of their limits

matter is eating my mind   I am in a river

 

 

 

                                I in my fox-cap

 

Drownings, 1975, mixed paper collage. Varujan Boghosian, American born 1926.  Courtesy of the artist exhibited in 2017 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

 

 

floating between the speechless reeds

I always wake like this being watched

 

 

 

 

 

Specimen unnumbered, 1981, silver gelatin print.  David Lede, American born 1948.  Philadelphia Art Museum

 

 

 

already forgetting who I am

the water wears my mask  

                                               I call  I call

lying under its lashes like a glance

 

 

 Chanticleer, Wayne, Pennsylvania

 

 

 

 

if only a child on a bridge would hoik me out

 

 

 

there comes a tremor and there comes a pause

 

 

down there in the underworld

where the tired stones have fallen

and the sand in a trance lifts a little

                         it is always midnight in those pools

 

 

Siberian Squill, Winterthur, Delaware

 

 

iron insects engraved in sleep

 

 

 

    I always wake like this being watched

 

I always speak to myself

                     no more myself but a colander

 

 

Fern, Winterthur, Delaware

 

 

draining the sound from this never-to-be                      mentioned wound

can you hear it

you with your long shadows and your short shadows

 

 

ShadowLife 070, 2014 (digital file), 2018 (print).  David Lebe, American born 1948 loan to an exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Museum, 2019

 

 

can you hear the severed head of Orpheus

 

 

 

Chanticleer, Wayne, Pennsylvania

 

no I feel nothing from the neck down

 

already forgetting who I am

the crime goes on without volition                                            singing in its bone

                     not I not I

        the water drinks my mind

 

as if in a black suit

                        as if bent to my books

     only my face exists sliding                                                 over a waterfall

 

Chanticleer, Wayne, Pennsylvania

 

and there where the ferns hang over the dark

and the midges move between mirrors

some woman has left her shoes

                                     two crumpled mouths              which my voice searches in and out

 

my voice being water

which holds me together and also                                                 carries me away

until the facts forget themselves                                 gradually like a contrail

and all this week

       a lime-green height troubles                                                         the river

      as if the mud was haunted

                                     by the wood

 

 

 

Mt. Cuba, Delaware, May 2019

 

 

this is how the wind works hard at                                                                        thinking

this is what speaks when no one speaks