2 poemas de Philip Hodgins

Eye of the needle

1.

In the earth
there are doorways
from this earth
but they are narrow.

2.

The weight of matter
keeps it down to earth,
as if the property called mass
is store-security, a clip-on
tag-alarm that stops us
taking our garment
when we leave the shop.

3.

Thoughts are already things
before they’re set to ink.
Their heaviness is hard
to measure, but material,
being stuff in the head.
Weigh the brain before
and after thinking,
the difference is no
laughing matter, too real
to follow us through Exits.

4.

Even light
is far too heavy.
It must be dark
through there.

The Sick Poem

The poem has cancer.
You couldn’t make it
look any worse
and feel any worse
if you threw acid
on the page afterwards.
It began as a minor complaint
and spread to be an obsession.
They say it has something
to do with words
but no-one really understands
how it works.
A well-paid team of experts
is looking hrough it,
a sample has been taken
and yes, words were there.
But what does that tell you?
There’s a theory
if you ignore the thing
then it will go away
but all experience shows
it just keeps coming back
more and more.
Perhaps you should
love what’s wrong with it?
Embrace the flaw:
a failure of communication,
an inability to form
the right words
at the appropriate time.
If this were something big,
say life or death,
there might be some insights
to be had from each stage,
like the hard wisdom
suffering is supposed to give you
but doesn’t really.
Think of what goes on
in all those hospitals.
Perhaps the problem
is one of bad manners:
those clapped-out poeticisms
struggling across the page
through a damaged form.
I’m telling you straight:
to use a metaphor
at a time like this
would be obscene.