Poem
John Burnside
Ronan
Ronan
Ronan
To prove that nothingreally disappears
and nothing comes of nothing,
days like these
we go down to the beach
and dig for hours
hauling up glass and creel bones
from the sand,
veins of razor shell
and drifted oil,
buttons and fishnets,
bottles, scraps of sail;
and think how our language
harbours the tongues of our elders,
Norse and Gaelic
buried in the map,
fragments of Sanskrit
shining through the hymnals.
More than we pretend
of what we do
is restoration:
dreaming into life
a world that’s neither
past nor primitive,
but fresh as the cream of the well,
of some upland source
concealed under plywood boards
and nettles
– wine-dark,
aboriginal.
© 2005, John Burnside
From: Times Literary Supplement
From: Times Literary Supplement
John Burnside
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1955)
John Burnside was born in Dunfermline, Fife, between the firths of Forth and Tay, in 1955. He lived in the English home counties and Gloucestershire before returning to Fife a few years ago. He studied English and European languages in Cambridge, and after working as a computer engineer became a fulltime writer; he also teaches at St Andrew’s University. He has won and been short-listed for sev...
Poems
Poems of John Burnside
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Ronan
To prove that nothingreally disappears
and nothing comes of nothing,
days like these
we go down to the beach
and dig for hours
hauling up glass and creel bones
from the sand,
veins of razor shell
and drifted oil,
buttons and fishnets,
bottles, scraps of sail;
and think how our language
harbours the tongues of our elders,
Norse and Gaelic
buried in the map,
fragments of Sanskrit
shining through the hymnals.
More than we pretend
of what we do
is restoration:
dreaming into life
a world that’s neither
past nor primitive,
but fresh as the cream of the well,
of some upland source
concealed under plywood boards
and nettles
– wine-dark,
aboriginal.
From: Times Literary Supplement
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