after John Nash <br /> <br />Nothing is as it was <br />in childhood, when we had to learn the names <br />of objects and colours, <br /> <br />and yet the eye can navigate a field, <br />loving the way a random stook of corn <br />is orphaned <br /> - not by shadows; not by light - <br /> <br />but softly, like the tinder in a children’s <br />story-book, the stalled world raised to life <br />around a spark: that tenderness in presence, <br /> <br />pale as the flame a sniper waits to catch <br />across the yards of razor-wire and ditching; <br />thin as the light that falls from chapel doors, <br /> <br />so everything, it seems, <br />is resurrected; <br />not for a moment, not in the sway of the now, <br /> <br />but always, <br />as the evening we can see <br />is all the others, all of history: <br /> <br />the man climbing up from the tomb <br />in a mantle of sulphur, <br /> <br />the struck match whiting his hands <br />in a blister of light.<br /><br />John Burnside<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cornfield-2/
