Matthew Kilbane
Andrea,
Here, where the gravel path
swerves from the railway
and takes the hill’s rise easy, loping long
switchback arcs,
the openhanded wind, summer-stiff
with pond sour,
is scrabbling at empty sky
with the grain-stoned ears of Ludlow’s wheat
and shredding my voice, an old flag,
to ribbons.
Over there,
the half-toppled dovecote rides
the far white crest of the Kipton granary
like a fermata,
like a query in continental philosophy:
do human adults
at some point come to regret
not having been born
nightingales, who don’t outgrow
th
Andrea,
Here, where the gravel path
swerves from the railway
and takes the hill’s rise easy, loping long
switchback arcs,
the openhanded wind, summer-stiff
with pond sour,
is scrabbling at empty sky
with the grain-stoned ears of Ludlow’s wheat
and shredding my voice, an old flag,
to ribbons.
Over there,
the half-toppled dovecote rides
the far white crest of the Kipton granary
like a fermata,
like a query in continental philosophy:
do human adults
at some point come to regret
not having been born
nightingales, who don’t outgrow
th