Christopher Middleton

Since the steering wheel of this blog has been grabbed by poetry in general and is exiting the Staircase Poetry Project parkway, now merging onto the Poetry & Art Turnpike (what exit?), I thought I would post a wonderful poem. Why not? (As I type this, I am listening to Richard Thompson doing a brilliant cover of Brittany Spears' "Oops I Did It Again" with a great reverb at the end... You can find it on his recent recording, 1000 Years of Popular Music.
Now, back to this poem. One to be read aloud. And written out to feel the careful crafting of its line breaks- a good way to get inside a poem and see it from the ribcage out: this is from Of the Mortal Fire : poems 1999-2002 (Sheep Meadow Press, Riverdale-on-Hudson, New York). Middleton's syntax is always astonishing.

Memory of the Vaucluse

In this French September light
Picking out profuse

Corals that invade the vine,
Yellows in the hayrick

And pools of blue somehow
Round the rooster's comb,

To die–undiseased,
Tending a lavender field,

A naked eye
Braving the angel, who descends

As angels on the loose
Holycards in a junkshop do,

Still with time enough–
Fear forgone, bondage to speech

Waved away–to sense the feathers
Rush and whisk,

Then giving up on it
To stand, the more to live.