James Deahl

The Sorrow of God

A Morning Poem
for Robert Bly

I awake at dawn to a day of frozen sleet,
A cold day at the end of February
With the mountain’s face buried in cloud.

It’s so early no one else seems to be up;
Then I hear a car start, its engine warming
By the house next door. Silently the mists lift.

I read last night that a moment of sorrow
Preceded creation, that act that summoned
The Earth into being, and us with it.

The house finches have already returned;
I see them waiting on the telephone wire.
My neighbour enters his car and drives off.

My mountain ash stands locked in a ring of ice,
But the night’s wind has dropped to nothing.
Later, I suspect, this ice will melt.

The day’s still quiet, my children asleep
In their rooms under the eaves. And I cannot
In my moment of time believe in a god of sorrow.

James Deahl

James Deahl was born in Pittsburgh in 1945, and grew up in that city as well as in and around the Laurel Highlands of the Appalachian Mountains. He moved to Canada in 1970 and holds Canadian citizenship. He’s the author (or, in the case of Tu Fu’s poetry, translator) of twenty literary titles.

Cosima Gillhammer

The Turning of the Year

This is the turning of the year,
Autumn approaches fast.
First leaves tinged with red,
weeping clouds and
a less gentle air.

Less gentle this life, too.
Illusions blown away
by the ravaging storm,
and the naked heart laid bare
like the dark branches of trees.

When we first spoke
we talked about spring’s sweet showers,
and the rain on our faces was warm and benign.
You were radiant then,
and the soft green of hope in your eyes.
You were the firstling of the year’s joy,
A gift unexpected, risen from snow.

We walked by the riverbank
and our smiles then were soft,
until they were scorched by the summer sun,
cracked open
and scarred
like a field newly ploughed.

And now the reaping has started,
the sound of sickles cutting
through sinew and heart.
The grain is scattered and
there is little to keep me warm
in winter’s dark night.

And perhaps this is wisdom –
to bear the withering
and yet to rejoice
in the flowers that bloomed.

This is the turning of the year,
and this is the howling
of winds over a barren land.

Cosima Gillhammer is a DPhil student and lecturer in Medieval English at the University of Oxford. Her academic research focuses on Middle English history writing and translations of Latin liturgical texts. She has had a lifelong love for poetry, but this is her first published poem. She is also a keen photographer, and her interest in nature and landscape is reflected in her writing.

Marc Woodward

Luigi’s Calendar

Thin Luigi stands next to me and points
at the sun’s red arc settling on the ridge,
clocking out of its daily labour
in the hot factory of summer.
He says that in the long days of June
it sets further towards the Gran Sasso
then, as each day passes, creeps its way
south along the far Morrone ridge.
But today is Ferragosto and the sun
still has much travelling to do.
For now I’m glad its hot eye is closing
on another sweltering afternoon.
I offer Luigi a beer which he declines,
as usual, and in my poor Italian
try to say how a calendar could be made
by putting markers on the hills
according to the setting sun.
He smiles, nods and speaks again.
I smile and nod too, feeling sure
neither of us have understood a word.
We watch the quick descent of the sun
the top edge just showing now…
…and now gone.
The bee-eaters are still chirruping,
but in the trees the last golden orioles
have calmed their fluting song.
Thin Luigi sighs and says Ciao Marco,
ci vediamo… then wanders off up the lane.
His dogs are barking in their pen.
I shake a mosquito from my ankle,
look back at the dark mountain ridge
and the house lights coming on in Serra.

If I were constant like Thin Luigi,
I could observe all the sunsets I’d need
to mark down and make that calendar
then use it to count the fallow days
which fall between you and me
each one like a flake of snow settling
on the slopes of Monte Amaro.

Marc Woodward is a poet and musician living in the English West Country – an environment much in evidence in his writing.
He has been widely published in journals and anthologies.
Recent collections include
A Fright of Jays (Maquette Press 2015), and Hide Songs (Green Bottle Press 2018). He was recently awarded a writing residency at The Wellstone Center in The Redwoods, Santa Cruz, CA., and his poem ‘Luigi’s Calendar’ (published in this edition of Acumen) was shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize.

Archive