Nobody

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by Alice Oswald

the green of her husband’s and her daughter’s

  disfigured corpse-forms and thought-storms

  being lifted up and down as dazed as plankton

  it’s fine she thought as long as I keep smiling

  not mentioning the blood on my nails then nothing

  will pass my weakness out between these pointed teeth-posts

  not even the murdered one with his last breath

  not even necessity will sniff me out

  or will she

  Purpled mind

  why go on circling

  There is a channel where an old sea-god swims

  on translucent wings

  five miles down in deep unflowered

  midnight where it snows and heaps up salt

  this goblin-god with ghost-grace frictionlessly

  moves

  or hangs like a pickled heart in the sea-jar

  nothing I say sinks down that far

  worn-out god can you hear this

  look up please from the interstellar hangings

  of your under-the-horizon house

  there is blood on the tiles

  the husband has died struck by his own wife

  as he stood naked in the bath

  can you hear this

  No

  not

  me

  A tired man clinging to a stony out-jut

  after a three-hour storm after a ten-year war

  clinging to that final handhold thinking

  god can you hear this

  no

  not

  me

  there he sways under the switched-off swinging bulb of the moon

  his ship has gone and he is the last man

  lashed to the last upright in the roaringnothing thinking

  now I really am somebody women are going to love

  this quirk I have of outlasting war cloud sickness everything

  even water ha! little does he know

  what a willpower even now at a hundred miles an hour

  is rushing towards his boast with the same wide-open mouth

  ready to out-character him and fill his gaping laughter

  with salt water now that his handhold

  breaks away in his hands and his head drops into the sea

  Why is my mind this untranslatable colour of scratchiness and indecision

  as of twilight turning into a night accused of corpses

  my answer is a swift one a goddess a hundred-mile-an-hour readiness

  flying alongside me and I ask you

  who would willingly travel over so much water

  like a permanent rain-cloud crizzling the sea

  so that the waves grow nervous covering up their crimes

  but truth will always out and so will

  falsehood

  That goddess pierced by clear-sightedness

  falling out of the air as winged and sudden as luck

  like flicking a light-switch

  flash

  in the dark of these words she stood here

  just a minute ago dead but alive in man’s clothes saying

  stranger weeping without stopping

  cutting off the conversations of those who have a right to be frivolous

  it is human to have a name but you seem unsolid somehow

  almost too porous to be human I would say

  some terrible repetition has eaten into you

  as water eats into metal this is what happens

  whenever love is mentioned your whole heart liquefies

  and the character of water stares out through your eyes

  it’s as if you were a woman maybe her mind wanders

  but it’s clear her flesh is damaged in some way

  as she drops to her knees and cries and so begins

  the simple mineral monologue of

  water

  Who is it saying these things is it only the tide

  passing like a rumour over the sea-floor or

  who is it keeps silent

  when somebody’s ring on nobody’s hand

  sinks like an eye into darkness

  and the wind drops

  and the water roars itself speechless

  who is it speaking she said

  my friend

  who is it watching me behind your eyelids

  Please he said will you please let me sleep

  fidgeting under his quilt with one foot touching the floor

  you know full well he said this is only the water

  talking to us in the voice of amnesia

  sometimes with scraping anxious steps

  turning over the stones and sometimes

  howling the same question over and over

  and on his rock that poet shuffles about light-sleeping

  every so often answering back

  who is it

  but for all this for maybe a thousand years

  it’s been the same answer to the same question

  no-one

  and on the roof the caretaker scarcely blinks

  staring at the sea-sky wondering which way up

  he is nailed to the night in case your husband

  dressed in his fate but as yet

  unmurdered

  suddenly appears

  But for all this for maybe a thousand years

  it’s been the same answer to the same question

  nothing

  Into which a star a whole unsynchronised solar system

  throwing out light like a splash of yellow paint across the night

  or else a burning angel falling out of heaven

  with briefcase open and his charred documents

  drifting about his head descending

  from floor to floor he looks liquefied

  like a towering sea-plume and finally his feet

  which seem to have no difficulty with water

  touch down on the horizon without friction

  as a seagull sleighs down waves

  and wets its stiff wings in the horrible sea-hollows

  looking for fish so he swerves and stalls

  and finds a woman sitting very still and cold

  and wizened with permanent headache on her island

  one hand like the shadow of an aeroplane

  barely moving over her own blue surface

  waves him away she says I know

  I know

  and the little breezes of her speeches smell like parsley

  You are a messenger and you’ve come to remove my lover

  who is tired of this hotel life you’ll find him

  sitting on the dunes in tears as always

  staring at the sea’s round eye of course

  Fate has its needle in him nothing can stop him draining away

  there seem to be two worlds one is water’s

  which always finds its level one is love’s which doesn’t

  but is wide a wide field of horrible upheavals

  there are gleams mists gusts is he hoping to float himself

  on that never-ending to and fro

  where the mind no longer belongs to the mind

  and a man’s shout boomerangs in the wind

  the light has no ceiling there are human hands

  stuck in the sand like kelp-stalks

  and huge cathedrals of waves

  a single

  moth

  struggles under wet sails

  but everything warm or weighted always

  falls

  So she shrieks and flies up laughing and loud-speakering

  and turns and dives unable to be anything for long

  and the black wave covers her

  NOBODY was commissioned by Bernard Jacobson to accompany the watercolours of William Tillyer and was first published by 21 Publishing in 2018 as an art book, edited by Paul Keegan and typeset by Kevin Mount. The poem is designed to be mobile and so it has been rewritten for Jonathan Cape, edited by Robin Robertson and reset by Kevin Mount. I am very grateful to all those me
ntioned and also to Anna Webber and Seren Adams.

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  poetry

  The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile

  Dart

  Woods etc.

  A Sleepwalk on the Severn

  Weeds and Wild Flowers

  Memorial

  Falling Awake

  editor

  The Thunder Matters: 101 Poems for the Planet

  Thomas Wyatt: Selected Poems

  Copyright © 2019 by Alice Oswald

  First American Edition 2020

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this

  book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact

  W. W. Norton Special Sales at [email protected] or 800-233-4830

  Jacket design by Jared Oriel

  Jacket photograph: Joshua Daniel / Shutterstock

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Names: Oswald, Alice, 1966– author. | Homer. Odyssey.

  Title: Nobody : a hymn to the sea / Alice Oswald.

  Description: First American edition. | New York, N.Y. :

  W. W. Norton & Company, 2020.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019053431 |

  ISBN 9781324005605 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781324005612 (epub)

  Subjects: LCSH: Homer—Adaptations. |

  Odysseus, King of Ithaca (Mythological character)—Poetry. |

  Epic poetry, Greek—Adaptations. | LCGFT: Poetry.

  Classification: LCC PR6065.S98 N63 2020 | DDC 821/.914—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053431

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

  www.wwnorton.com

  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS

 

 

 


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