Tamar Yoseloff
TACET
It will open with a single idea which I will attempt to make
as seductive as the color and shape and fragrance of a flower.
– John Cage, considering his lecture on silence
He wanted us to hear the sound of our own
breathing, the pin-drop quiet, the vacuum
we typically fill with muzak, endless voices
urging us away from the toughness of alone.
There’s no place we don’t occupy without
our buzz and rumble: stop, he tells us,
stop
and let silence come
like a roar, the longest sigh that stretches
beyond words; he knew there’s no such thing
as an empty space, even when we’re gone:
what we leave is out of sight, but clear,
splitting air with something without meaning,
at least not in language, and when it stops
we still hear it inside our bodies. It never stops.
BLUE RAG ZINE
A cut up of Gaberlunzie by Douglas Dunn
1.
a slack clock melts frost
ferns crust the skirting board
the country gathered in vagrancy
before the stooping waif
he sinks in centuries of bracken
a clockwork of hedgerows
deep blows
he lives in
forgotten glades and gullies
grassy pirate hideouts
demands his own sun’s century
footprints loosening time’s edge
2.
morning ploughs brown furrows
in his mind
distant silver moments
half-wild with regret
he turns his back on man
slopes into the field
land tracked in secrecy
earth wears his touch
thorns each strut
his life numbered and shut
FAULT LINES
When it fell from my hands
that plate –
Chinese, nineteenth century
maybe older – the one that belonged to
your great-grandmother
the antique dealer
known to everyone in Bournemouth
for her penchant for red hats
it shattered
into pieces on the floor, white porcelain
with blue and orange flowers, gold rim;
you said we can glue it
so we gathered
all the fragments but something
was still missing – its essential aspect
until the instant of destruction
gone
an object that survived
rough journeys, outlived countless owners
including your great-grandmother
who treasured
what was worn and used,
things that spoke of those who loved them
passed down to children, and children’s
children
until this plate arrived with me
only to slip through tired fingers
to the hard wood it would break on;
no longer what it was
can I attempt
to piece these jagged spikes together –
like artisans taught to mend
with gold, turning a fault into a feature –
and learn to live
with what is fractured?
It will open with a single idea which I will attempt to make
as seductive as the color and shape and fragrance of a flower.
– John Cage, considering his lecture on silence
He wanted us to hear the sound of our own
breathing, the pin-drop quiet, the vacuum
we typically fill with muzak, endless voices
urging us away from the toughness of alone.
There’s no place we don’t occupy without
our buzz and rumble: stop, he tells us,
stop
and let silence come
like a roar, the longest sigh that stretches
beyond words; he knew there’s no such thing
as an empty space, even when we’re gone:
what we leave is out of sight, but clear,
splitting air with something without meaning,
at least not in language, and when it stops
we still hear it inside our bodies. It never stops.
BLUE RAG ZINE
A cut up of Gaberlunzie by Douglas Dunn
1.
a slack clock melts frost
ferns crust the skirting board
the country gathered in vagrancy
before the stooping waif
he sinks in centuries of bracken
a clockwork of hedgerows
deep blows
he lives in
forgotten glades and gullies
grassy pirate hideouts
demands his own sun’s century
footprints loosening time’s edge
2.
morning ploughs brown furrows
in his mind
distant silver moments
half-wild with regret
he turns his back on man
slopes into the field
land tracked in secrecy
earth wears his touch
thorns each strut
his life numbered and shut
FAULT LINES
When it fell from my hands
that plate –
Chinese, nineteenth century
maybe older – the one that belonged to
your great-grandmother
the antique dealer
known to everyone in Bournemouth
for her penchant for red hats
it shattered
into pieces on the floor, white porcelain
with blue and orange flowers, gold rim;
you said we can glue it
so we gathered
all the fragments but something
was still missing – its essential aspect
until the instant of destruction
gone
an object that survived
rough journeys, outlived countless owners
including your great-grandmother
who treasured
what was worn and used,
things that spoke of those who loved them
passed down to children, and children’s
children
until this plate arrived with me
only to slip through tired fingers
to the hard wood it would break on;
no longer what it was
can I attempt
to piece these jagged spikes together –
like artisans taught to mend
with gold, turning a fault into a feature –
and learn to live
with what is fractured?
© Copyright Tamar Yoseloff 2021
Tamar Yoseloff’s sixth collection is The Black Place (Seren 2019). She’s also the author of Formerly (with photographs by Vici MacDonald), shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award, and collaborative editions with artists Linda Karshan and Charlotte Harker respectively. She’s a lecturer on the Poetry School / Newcastle University MA in Writing Poetry.