Excerpt: The School on the Coast Road

The School on the Coast Road

In the beginning waters covered
the earth but before that earth
was fire then air made fire turn
to water air made waterfire
the Northern Lights flaming green
and gold and blue through your iris
in the beginning was a game
of scissors paper stone but I
could not decide which to choose
cold fists in coat sleeves
or paper blown against the chain-link
fence or when some mornings our
teachers who were maybe bored
laid out scissors and glue and we
who were still igneous selah!
veiled the window glass with steam
and covered up the sky the trees
the sun but still the sea was always
there at the foot of every
day like a beginning like
coming into language like
God in the hymn books who rolled
breakers of blue fire across
the bay beyond the school yard

***

Deaf

Are you listening you are
listening to the world
you think but you hear yourself
over and over the dark tongue

of world its hidden places
under trees beyond the lights
darkness falling from your feet
so deep you could fall through it

forever and how loud world
is with night in the trees
like a roost of galahs rising
the dark tongue of world

rising up through you as you
fall dear self dear
lonely self falling silently
mouthing through sound

***

Dante’s Cave
Velike Doline, Škocjan

Finally I came
to the end of the world
to a limestone cliff
falling in pale steps

and far below a pool
somehow out of myth
proving that there
was nothing but the rock

to hold me up to raise me
into that clear air
where crows were looping where the eye
of God was gold

and inattentive then
I saw the end is air
and falling it is clean
and lovely it is blue.

***

Arcades

In the morning air
voices fill and empty
beside the barn under
the walnut trees
one continual linked pouring
the way arcades go
linking and pouring linked
and poured their speech is one
continual discourse
raising hands to gesture
speaking on and on
in the shade under
the cypress trees they do not
know the morning or the evening
when it comes
they only know this speaking
that rises and falls
in them like song.

***

Excerpted with permission from The School on the Coast Road by Fiona Sampson published by Red River 2023