I have been meaning to put this poem up for a long time. I also pinched it from
Granta, so I hope no one gets annoyed. Sam Willets is one of the most incredible poets I have come across in my life. Having had only one collection out,
New Light for the Old Dark (released under Cape Poetry earlier this year), it would take a lot of time for me to describe why I think he's phenomenal. However for now, I'll say that his poetry is the most concise and taut embodiment of fleeting moments, whether they come from events as historical as the destruction of Warsaw or as trivial as a murmation of starlings in the distance. It has this constant assured drive to it, that manages to never stray from the most delicate choices of phrasing and imagery. He has spent his life as heroin addict, teacher, journalist, travel writer and most importantly, poet.
You can also find this poem in the aforementioned collection:
Trick
The unexceptional mystery takes place:
around eleven, love turns to matter, Dad
dead. The ward grows and shrinks, early Spring
breaking promises through the glass.
Dad's untoothed mouth gawps, and its last
O holds one darkness; dark of a worked-out
abandoned mine. His absence is brute
absurdity, his hand soft as vellum.
His new state exposes the stark child of him,
and un-sons me. No answer now to a son's
questions, about this, about the sense,
for all his slightness, of a long life's mass
coming to rest, a settling that churns up
grief in a rounding cloud. Dad
dead; ends of the opaque trick
that turns our gold to lead