Poetry

Dancing The Knife © Philip Gross

The Song of the Knife

She looked out on her childhood garden; a late frost
had turned the leaves to knives. See the crack in the door
with the moon looking in?
			That’s the knife.
The knife is no news of home on the news;
the knife is waiting, and a siren getting nearer in the night.

The knife is an old song that no one can translate now:
we walked three days without water on the plains of the knife:
even the word ‘knife’
			might be not be right;
the knife is a letter that hides in the alphabet; dangling,
the phone flex  is a species, cunningly disguised, of knife.

A package from the old world, sealed with ticky-tape
might be the knife they’ve sent for you, but how to open it
without the knife?
			there’s blood on the white
page - just a paper cut, so quick you never felt it;
the most innocent things can be friends of the knife.

The knife is tawny mountains, seen through shivering acacias;
the knife is hunger in the middle of a meal with friends;
the knife is not either
			nor is the knife or;
the knife won’t take No for an answer - or Yes;
in the wrong town, on the wrong night, the knife is not a metaphor.

Litany

Halt. Who goes there?

    by foot    by train     by stealth     by truck
    by luggage hold    by dead of night
    by back roads    by visa    by lawyer     by luck
    by friends    by knowing someone who
    by bribed    by forged    by oversight
    by sweat    by debt    by can’t say No
    by pulling strings    by sleight of hand
    by jumping bail    by lying low

Halt. Who goes there?

And where in the world is there to go?

Infolding

 Fold yourself
   into yourself
     as if the old-gold
       petals of a saffron
         crocus could fold
 back to the bud and blades
   of leaves close round it
     and the tender shoot
        sink back into the stone-
          hard earth where the bulb,
 the many-layered heart,
   lies papery, dumb
     for now but ageless, full
       of everything that’s gone
         and everything to come.


 Fold yourself into me,
   my friend, my beloved,
     fold me into you
       like the blades of a penknife,
         like days into nights,
 like your hand into mine.
   Knifeplay, knifedance,
     knifesong, say the ghosts
       of the knife, the gentle ghosts.
         Let these be your delights.

Reprise

The knife is a straight street, sharp with rain;
it narrows towards the horizon; the knife can cut
both ways; the knife
			is no toy for a child;
the knife-sharpener looked in from the street as if he knew me
and when I said I had no knife he only smiled.

My mother’s knife’s handle was inlaid with lapis lazuli,
a clasp in the shape of a swan’s neck; still it was a knife;
the knife is the last word:
			"well?"    And again
we’re walking the knife edge, on towards the tip; if we
can keep our balance that far, we’ll know what to do then.

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