Poem: ‘Where beckons the quiver…?’

_        Where beckons the quiver…?

Are there no spirits moving in the air
_                       ruling the region between earth and sky ?

And do you shine from the sky
_                       goddess in decay,
_                                   as respite from the spit of day ?

For this world could not hold you ?

Whose arm twitches with your pulse,
_                       as your ghost drifts through the lining
_                                   of the throat ?

Whose voice crackles as it shouts,
_                       Whose chest wheezes like a blade of grass,
_                                   split for air to move through ?

Were they torn by tongues of anguish,
_                       the remnants of your melody,
_                                   stretching a voice into a cry
_                                   thwarting the borders of a heart ?

You leave behind that crumpled piece of paper,
_                       Not the wrinkles of your face.
If language should leave you,
_                       alone to the touch,
where beckons the quiver of
_                       ageless almighty ?

Each one of us a teardrop,
_                       enters the world’s heart chamber
_                       and congeals before your eyes?

Do you kiss the half-flown ivory tongues
_                       that swipe across the many lips ?
And do the stars cluster,
_                       as though gulls in search of comfort,
_                       their screams of spirals broken,
_                       their feathers like stilled flames ?
And were eternal chasms or a breath
_                       to fill the shells
_                       of their lost melodies ?

Paul Downes’ latest work Towards a Concentric Spatial Psychology for Social and Emotional Education Beyond the Interlocking Spatial Pillars of Modernism (2024) is an open access book.

Feature Image: The Flammarion engraving, c.1888.