Loading...

Flies

This is the day the ies fall awake mid-sentence
and lie stunned on the windowsill shaking with speeches
only it isn’t speech it is trembling sections of puzzlement which
break off suddenly as if the questioner had been shot
 
this is one of those wordy days
when they drop from their winter quarters in the curtains and sizzle as they fall
feeling like old cigarette butts called back to life
blown from the surface of some charred world
 
and somehow their wings which are little more than akes of dead skin
have carried them to this blackened disembodied question
 
what dirt shall we visit today?
what dirt shall we re-visit?
 
they lift their faces to the past and walk about a bit
trying out their broken thought-machines
coming back with their used-up words
 
there is such a horrible trapped buzzing wherever we y
it’s going to be impossible to think clearly now until next winter
what should we
what dirt should we
Other works by Alice Oswald...



Top