Gaslight
By Tom Raworth
a line of faces borders the strangler’s work
heavy european women
mist blows over dusty tropical plants
lit from beneath the leaves by a spotlight
mist in my mind a riffled deck
of cards or eccentrics
was i
a waterton animal my head
is not my own
poetry is neither swan nor owl
but worker, miner
digging each generation deeper
through the shit of its eaters
to the root – then up to the giant tomato
someone else’s song is always behind us
as we wake from a dream trying to remember
step onto a thumbtack
two worlds – we write the skin
the surface tension that holds
you
in
what we write is ever the past
curtain pulled back
a portrait behind it
is a room suddenly lit
looking out through the eyes
at a t.v. programme
of a monk sealed into a coffin
we close their eyes and ours
and still here the tune
moves on
Copyright Credit: Tom Raworth, "Gaslight" from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2003 by Tom Raworth. Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press, Ltd.
Source: Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2003)