Excerpt from Divide These

THE WEIGHT OF THE INSIDE OF THE BODY

It is a good thing to be in the vestibule.
The draft from the front door,
the hall lamp hanging from the ceiling, unlit,
the mind before it enters the house
of tenuous relationship, of starting,
of settling, of keeping still.


YEAR ONE

The pear in the bowl a week now.
Three days too long. The dark bruise
spreads and everything else
softens, as if in assent. The fifth
analysis, the sixth analysis
on the table. Still to be got to.
And alongside, the stacks of books
for the day to be got to,
the summer day, the winter day, the mind

sitting in the center of the body,
the body in the center of the house,
what pauses naturally,
what hesitates after
a comma and moves on.
Notice the breath caught
as if on a thorn in the thicket:
that is where your intelligence
is to be gathered.


ELEGY

The work of the burial is never done. First the interruption,
then the interruption, so it’s carried on in sleep,
over to argument, floating in the water with the flowers
the shit the shells the debris from the city after the rains
have washed it to the beaches and the sea
has taken it up into itself. The figure with the shovel:
the figure with the shovel: the figure with
the book, the shoulders rising, the dog reading news
on the pavement washed then by rain running off the asphalt
down into the gulley where it goes under the city with the tunnelling

animals, the cunning animals, the readers under
the city.

From Divide These.  Copyright 2005 by Saskia Hamilton. All rights reserved.