Colin Edgington: News

For those interested, here is a fairly new piece entitled “The Return.” It is kind of RAW, so bear with the quality (although some of its characteristics come from its source). It is from a series called “Wolf_Dance” which is still in progress.

A month or so after titling the piece I came across a poem called “The Return” by Ezra Pound.  Interesting coincidence and although they (the poem and my piece) come/came from two very different places, I think it is definitely worth repeating here for the serendipitous similarities they share:

The Return by Ezra Pound*

See, they return; ah, see the tentative
Movements, and the slow feet,
The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
Wavering!

See, they return, one, and by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
And murmur in the wind,
and half turn back;
These were the “Wing’d-with-Awe,”
Inviolable.

Gods of the winged shoe!
With them the silver hounds,
sniffing the trace of air!

Haie! Haie!
These were the swift to harry;
These the keen-scented;
These were the souls of blood.

Slow on the leash,
pallid the leash-men!

*From the book Ezra Pound: Early Writings, Poems and Prose

I recently picked up W.S. Merwin’s last book, which I recommend, and had to share at least one poem:

Photographer by W.S. Merwin

Later in the day
after he had died and the long box
full of shadow had turned the corner
and perhaps he no longer was watching
what the light was doing
as its white blaze climbed higher
bleaching the street and drying the depths
to a blank surface

when they started to excavate the burrow
under the roof where he had garnered his life
and to drag it all out into the raw moment
and carry it down the stairs
armload by armload to the waiting dumpcart
nests of bedding clothes from their own days
shards of the kitchen there were a few bundled papers
and stacks of glass plates heavy and sliding
easily broken before they could be got down
to the tumbril and mule
pieces grinding underfoot
all over the floor and down the stairs
as they would remember

fortunately someone who understood
what was on the panes bought everything in the studio
almost no letters were there but on the glass
they turned up face after face
of the light before anyone had beheld it
there were its cobbled lanes leading far into themselves
apple trees flowering in another century
lilies open in sunlight against former house walls
worn flights of stone stairs before the war
in days not seen except by the bent figure
invisible under the hood
who had just disappeared

*From W.S. Merwin’s last book (2008) titled The Shadow of Sirius

Pine Tree Tops by Gary Snyder

in the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight.
the creak of boots.
rabbit tracks, deer tracks
what do we know.

*By (a favorite of mine) Gary Snyder from No Nature