☀ Today's Poem: "All Souls" (excerpt) Saskia Hamilton

——

'He has an ethic of solidarity with the victims
of history,' Heaney said of Herbert. He wanted
his vast book of collected poems to be 'open
to everyone in the world.' And 'to hold the line.'

The Archangel also 'had forewarned
Adam, by dire example, to beware.'
This afternoon, at the Neue Galerie,
Franz Marc, Die ersten Tiere (1913)—one turns

this way on the way to the field.
Felix Nussbaum's memories of crowds
and gatherings (1925), where
does that line lead, what are they pressing

to see, their backs to us? Will we join them?
Knowing comes later, later may be
aftermath, or prelude. An introductory
statement is stenciled on the gallery wall.

——

Bonjour Tristesse on the Penguin Classics
mug. Which recollects the friend at the bar
who kept saying 'bonjour, Tristesse' to an
exasperated stranger, over and over,
as was their subsequent, brief affair,
they'd meet before seven, it was at
an end for good each time. Goodness came along

later, in the form of you, your 'aquiline
profile,' as Ms. Hardwick remarked
when she saw the photograph taken
with my last good camera, my own brief story
of tea in the cup with the figure
of the arctic bird from the London zoo
we went to that first Sunday, you who lived near

the zoos of Paris, Dublin, Amsterdam,
to rise to the sounds of creatures
calling for breakfast from the keepers,
so triste and wonder pale we were,
from each our own pasts, burnt as we had been
by the mere rising of the sun,
the good days ahead, the winter gifts.

yet to be gifted. One day.

——

New Year's drizzle, nine, every church in the City
solitary. Empty roads, bus gone.
We stood on the curb looking at
Hawksmoor's façade. The churchyard dead
were removed for the coming of the Underground.
Does it help to remember them
when hearing the sound of time?
Inside, in the long and narrow, pleas
for intercession on yellow post-its
left by the candles. A plaque for John Newton
and other former reverends unknown.