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Leslie Philibert


Morendo on Sunday

a basin of white chipped enamel
tips the wash over the pale streets;
lights appear in the random order

of secret intent, confused stars
in an untidy sky light the northern stone:
hours slip behind a rook’s shadow;

a rain curtain falls, we sigh with routine:
we are waiting for a small, clean death,
trapped between the sun and the moon.
​

A Night in Tenerife

the sea the skin of a wet dog,
black the beach, a ruined church,
the coastal lights a string of lesser ways;
we are as empty as a dropped shell
pulled across the ebb, a ripple of salt.

and as the night gets deeper
a dragon breathes like the tide:
no mistake, the dark needs its hours.
​

After Reading The Bell Jar

curl up like black paper,
burning like a moth;
a glove turned inside out,

trapped too under a house,
a circle hidden and musty;
fragile under steps,

let us escape the carrying,
legions of white coats;
corridors as long as life. 
​

Tree Child

rest among the gentians
                     like an exhausted lover,
                     the road has thrown

you out of track and youth,
                     a line of rescue wakes
                     the rooks in the cold trees

there is a nest not far away
                    waiting to fall, a pause
                    before the first call, a damp leaf.  
​

Rungholt

Whirls of wicker and calico
             of turf and salt,
             of cats and fish.

The eyes of those
             surprised by sudden depths
             are bitter and open.

They drink sea under the glass
             of a cracked tide,
             in dark tunnels of waves.

The water children flail under a sea moon.

The sea drags across the dark silt :
             hear the bell, hear the bells
​

Incident

Anywhere. Evening rain.

Snakes cross the road,
                    that is no longer an obvious place,
                    it cracks like old toffee.

Lost souls in nightgowns and slippers
                    foam behind wire.
                    A dark tide bids,

then waits for a gallery of small heads,
blue eyes devoid of doubt.

A world of small signs
​

A Mowed, After

Anklecut but running;
cornchildren at break,
dust and more dust.

Flight the cutting
of a lost sanctuary,
legless with shock

at life turned upside.
Stubble the blunt cut,
the wait of the expectant
loam, under the farrow.
​

Girl

Crouching as many curves
in a bronze spring
a road full of curves

Tugging your kness
into the apples of your chest
hair seaweed over rocks

Hidden the face
between a bone tunnel
a circle perfect in itself
​

Background Actor

For a few seconds in Columbo; scratching like a         cat
at the door of recognition, selling hotdogs as a star
drifts by. Motel curtains that smell of coffee;
a bed full of bottles, dust between his fingers. Cut.
A noble fall! - we never knew him; a minor hero
stamped on celluloid; lost on the cutting-room floor.
​

Autopoiesis

You are climbing out of the seat of my body;
rising as a small loaf, a scrap of wonder.
Stamped in wax with my ugly mug and running.
Surprised you are broken glass, a bit of face
or a toast-dropper of a fear. You are weighed with
a ton of my own past, packaged and disguised, the
torn tape of a reel-to-reel, endless and twisted.

No shit Sherlock, children are from their parents;
But they don`t know that. Forgive me.
​

At My Own Funeral

Bells. Cold air. Damp earth.
Carrying my own coffin as if

divided and watching myself from outside.
Throw masks into an empty grave.

I have been caught leaving a shop
with a bag of stolen apples.

Surrounded by dropped faces and lost tones.
The air cold. Earth damp. Bells.
​

What Night Not Is

Not a cabin banged together with dark wood and nails of stars;
not the ballast in cold ship full of shouts.
Trees are not sewage; ice is not to be loved, not
the darkness nor the cold blanket thrown over dead lovers
nor the black cloth over the head of a to-be-shot.
Not the curve of light over an airport, not a motorway lifting nor
the dry cancer of a widow. Not a parcel of sons nor a gift of frost.
Not many things: not even the helpless space between
two reduced lightings.

Der Turmfalke

The weight inside a dive; muscles work against the wind.
Motionless ignore the reduced; a quilt of cornfields,
bleached boxes of barns; holes full of gravel,
a mess of houses and lanes. So when
the heat rises and the earth scatters:
heed the hunter`s eyes, the blue irises,
the terrible beauty of the last seconds, sinking.
​

(the end)

a river full of dead pigs
                 a burning moon
                 a child squatting in mud

was that it then, just that ?
                no trace of birth
                a cold tuber that might

seek helplessly your hands
               wet with drops from a rusty tap
               fingernails dark and underlined

that follow the trace of a fleeing star
               an escape into the big black

               over the wall, over the wall.

​
                     ♢
​
Picture

   
​​Read Leslie Philibert's profile
Go to page 2 of Leslie Philibert's Poetry.  

The Slaughter of Trees

searching for the perfect word on virginal paper
leads to the cut, to oaken tears, to a sorrow of yews;
then the unbalance; rowdy tracks of leaves and
branches: the pushing down against green bursts,
the mud and ways, as if we could find more truth
than the idle wind on a summer`s night, more than
just a hush, more than just a whisper, more than this
​

Night Spinning

​the night is the black down of a yearling
this sky a taunt of trailed stars,
let me spin in a frosty lane,
                       head back,
                       too fast to count
and throw the dark to ground
​

Falling

the wind turns my apple tree
into a victim, a lover banging
on a closed door of gnarled wood ;

a dance makes this ringing evening
singular, the leaves agree to fall
and turn in the dull faith of air,

they tell us about birth and departure,
about leaving together, stories of
ending as the sun arcs and protests
​

The Sea at Night

a move of broken glass
black as polished leather,
burnt wood, the big shifter

that trembles steel under us,
the horizon hides, above
a curtain made of holes

with stars around as the
lost language of wind,
howls of salt, tide of night
​

Seagulls Over Antrim
​              ~in memoriam Liam Clarke

The strandcafe 
                   was lined
                   with Hitchcock seagulls

as you looked over
                    your glasses
                    with concern
                    and said

that I did not understand Hegel.

A time ago of rage and joy, of rain.
​

A Single Image of Clock  Children (for Syria)

Flywheels enamel
with heartblood,
aortal ticks hesitate

before the dull bang
of a falling fist;
the fat knuckle

of the next hit,
tick tick the
small ones,

the eaters of dust,
stone-eyed they fall apart
like lost time,

the weights that
regulate all this
are unbalanced.
​

A Bavarian Winter

The Alps make me embryonic
the King of sleep, the wind
                 a sea inside my ears

each insignificant leaf
sugar bleached,
                 hard as a saint`s foot,

each drop of water pearled
                 and perfectly dead

under a dim sky, underlighted
                 over the white sheet
                 that you draw over the passed.

Let the crows pick out
the eyes of Winter.

Clinic

Fogs of ghosts carry souls in buckets.
With steps in dance and many hands

they polish your armour and
hammer you back together.

They throw you out of glass rooms,
back to your old door, you fruitcake,
you mad hatter, you looney,

back to the grey street, you have
long enough babbled 
at an empty ring of chairs,

You spin too slowly not to tip over,
your cranium scrubbed, your bones trepanned,
your new smile fixed with wire.

Herbert and the Cats

Old Herbert, hater of the feline species
Nearly got one at twenty feet with a schnapps bottle ;
these hairy rats piss on my cauliflowers
he winded through yellow molars.
That was a Tuesday, a wet one.

Been in the garage again, these smellies
I heard them coughing between the tyres ;
the doors have more scratches than Gran`s glasses.
The postman, an outsider to the human race,
must have let em`in. Back to Egypt, these purrers..
That was Thursday, better weather.

The cats must have killed him.
As brave streeters we all lined up at the funeral.
We all slightly lifted a leg in his honour, without scorn.
Might have been a Friday, but I`m not sure now.

A Winter's Ending

The snow in the courtyard brings
a new shape each day; no sense in the melting,
but I have not attended to this.
A girl waiting at a station, with smiles.
Children as birds-in-snow, tankers in the night
before Greece, a tooth bloody in a tea towel.

Enough; carry the snow children away,
teeth of the sea, a tanker of light,
a station full of smiles, a bloodless bird.

The last grey day; the translated play
of lost times turning into water.
​

Electra

Let me seek asylum in the sea
silent depths of ice water
for I have swallowed sorrow.

Touch the clematis in a seaside garden
a patched wall sun-warmed
and crystal with salt.

Shudder at the shouts of the breakers
small stones laughing as they
are pulled over sand.

Orestes : even the noble are no more than disguised.
​

Elegy

I didn`t choose the words;
the words chose me.

Once you accept that the world has no meaning
you find peace.
No green farrows of the sea.
No coded stars in the night.
Do not lose yourself to find God.
He does not need your despair.
He does not need you at all.

So when you emerge from your house
on a icy morning
and the night creeps into day
let it be, it is it.

Go to page 2 of Leslie Philibert's poetry.

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***

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