Gaslight

By Tom Raworth b. 1938 Tom Raworth

a line of faces borders the strangler’s work

heavy european women

mist blows over dusty tropical plants

lit from beneath the leaves by a spotlight

mist in my mind a riffled deck

of cards or eccentrics

was i

a waterton animal my head

is not my own

poetry is neither swan nor owl

but worker, miner

digging each generation deeper

through the shit of its eaters

to the root – then up to the giant tomato

someone else’s song is always behind us

as we wake from a dream trying to remember

step onto a thumbtack

two worlds – we write the skin

the surface tension that holds

you

what we write is ever the past

curtain pulled back

a portrait behind it

is a room suddenly lit

looking out through the eyes

at a t.v. programme

of a monk sealed into a coffin

we close their eyes and ours

and still here the tune

moves on

Source: Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2003)

Biography

Writer, artist, teacher, and publisher Tom Raworth was born in South London. He attended the University of Essex; in 1970, he earned an MA in the theory and practice of literary translation. As founder of Matrix Press and cofounder of Goliard Press, Raworth was instrumental in bringing an entire tradition of American poetry to English readers. Promoting the work of a number of poets associated with the Black Mountain School, . . .

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