“…a poem is a way of happening, a mouth.” (W.H. Auden)
In the Year of Not Caring
I discovered that I like my body even yet,
how it opens into itself in the light.
I remembered all of it, concavity,
convexity, bones and skin and heart.
I still wanted some thunderous justice,
some knife to the guts of them, some
deadly blow, though I made efforts
to show kindness, to keep
my judgements to myself.
I discovered an old book of longing;
a list that keeps growing.
I wasn’t one person and never had been.
I talked myself out of things.
I still wanted some bell-like truth
ringing. I wanted the spirits to reveal
themselves and speak clearly for once;
ghosts of starvation, of blood, walking
the streets of the town, crying.
In the Year of not Caring is from Carnivorous, (Doire Press).
‘She recognizes the capacity of language to transform ourselves, to chart a region where ‘Rivers and land and self and time/flow through each other.’—Ciaron Carson.
Read more about Moyra Donaldson here.
