A very special thanks to film-maker Bill Bulmer for all his hard work and creative insight in putting it together. I've always thought that putting poetry to images is an interesting, but worthwhile, challenge and I'm really delighted with the results.
So here it is then. Hope you enjoy it.
You can also find a higher quality, large screen format, version of the piece on Vimeo at the following link: Reykjavik.
Reykjavik
At first it was the word I heard,
simply the word. The throat tightens
and tongue taut, to spit out the sharp v
the clipped k’s. The rumble of the ja
in the cave of the mouth echoes a harsh
landscape: Rey-k-ja-vik.
Then there was a grey canvas that lay
empty for days, just hanging there
somewhere inside the mind, swaying
to the thrum of that syncopated word
(it a mumbled mantra of sorts).
Today it is a grey sea, a grey sky rising
from it, flexing a heavy swell and fall,
coughing up a white froth. From below
the seal-god comes, calling from
his underworld: swim deep, cross
the sea, how else will you learn to speak?
Blue is my world now that I follow him.
We weave a slow course beneath the fishing boats,
soundlessly dodging the nets they drag behind them.
He has brought me to the waiting room
of myself across the blue corridor of ocean.
But I must not be fooled, for soon
I will stand alone on a glacial shore.
*
The waves lash against the rocks. I crawl
up from the surf, scramble over shells and stones
and the thunder of seagulls that fills the world.
The salty light burns my eyes – colours are washed
and metallic here. A sharp wind licks my skin.
It is a messenger of the snow – follow, follow.
A city squats not far from here.
(I suppose it is a city like all others: people
busy in the shops and streets, cars going past
in a steady flow, conversation shuttled
along the counters of restaurants and pubs –
it is the currency of the living blood.)
I do not seek such comforts this morning.
It is the violence of genesis I’m after: the waters
breaking, the red mess of afterbirth, the first sounds
garbled out into the weak daybreak. I begin to walk.
With each step the years dissolve. I strip back self
layer by layer till there is little left:
the scrawling in a bird’s nest, the mysterious
writings on the underside of a stone,
the windswept syllable of the moon.
The word forms again on my lips. Reykjavik.
The place is named. I return to where I began.
A window. A desk. A piece of paper and pen.
The night huddles against the pane,
I all alone in my hidden den.
from On Light & Carbon (London: Ward Wood Publishing, 2013)
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