It seemed the thing was juster
with its angles driven keener
giving depth and variation
to incising swallows black
along the traplines, slubs
in kinds of silk bent to
the spine, rounded, debossed
so I made the shadows, there
was room to mine the dry distracted
areas of sweet astride
the stark waiting to split the seasoned
cortex over-ridging the packed
flesh, the ruffed flesh marled
the bole, it was not flesh that glowed
off somewhat else but a dark mass
before the nineteenth century, though
I fell upon the work encumbered
as I was in verging snow
in a way of seeing through the stranded
vaults offwards, from the oak
the double-banded tucked and sheening
thing, world, withal
its stencil-webbed matters passing there.
from The Great Medieval Yellows Find more by Emily Wilson at the library
Copyright © 2015 Emily Wilson
Used with the permission of Canarium Books.