Archives can be a dangerous place. Riffling through perforated pages, laced with silverfish kisses, can be a treacherous trail past more years than you might care to remember. Huginn and Muninn can be unkind birds; ravens are not known for their tenderness or tact.
Yet there is a thrill from recognising an old line once murmured, a sentiment lost to time and now resurrected. The dismay at purple prose (or in the three samples to follow, violet verse, alas) but also the surprise at your keener yet more forgiving eye.
Here are a trio of poems I dug up from the trenches of decades gone. I cringe rereading them, but with a wistful grin also.
I. Quiet
Nothing stirs It’s oh so quiet Quieter than the Björk song I’m stealing This line from So quiet monks freeze In their robes, their hands Are stone Statue-silent. Still It’s not still Inside our heads A maelstrom A tornado A discotheque Chaos instead. Slowly We take longer breaths Breathe deeply We slow down Quiet our minds Quiet our hearts Quiet, slowly Quiet.
II. Armour
Castles in the clouds And houses built by little pigs Are meant to be blown apart. Tear them down. Still You are wearing armour. They don’t see it How strong You really are.
III. Rising
Light streams Through the windows. Early morning, A different city. I’m escaping The same dream Over and over. One day, I tell you, I shall be rising And not dream This same dream Still.
It occurs to me that these are lines about stillness, and how much seismic activity can hide beneath our stillness. Or I am simply seeing what isn’t there. Hindsight is deceitful and merciful in equal measure.
Huginn and Muninn can be unkind birds, yet an unkindness of ravens is surely better than a murder of crows.
(None of you would believe this but I had forgot about the collective nouns for animals when I wrote the introduction; any atrocious wordplay here is a most marvellous accident. Lame puns are my happy place.)
Thought and memory, bad poetry and wistfulness. May we have more of these, always.