The Lantern Cage

by Kelly Grovier

Overview

The poems that Kelly Grovier’s third collection, The Lantern Cage, brings together are prompted by scenes that occur in life’s everyday spaces—city streets and secondhand shops, museum galleries and trains. The title conjures contrasting images of illumination and shadow, warmth and confinement, the burning soul and the material body. These are poems that seek to shine a warm light on the mysteries that underlie our existence. This is a world of “undeciphered sands,” “lost cathedrals,” “buried books,” and “bone machines”—a land where substance and shadow blur. It is a collection that is by turns lyrical and philosophical, romantic and playful.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781906188139
Publisher:	Carcanet Press, Limited
Publication date:	08/01/2014
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Kelly Grovier is the founder of the scholarly journal European Romantic Review and a regular contributor to the Observer and the Times Literary Supplement. He is a lecturer in English and creative writing at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and the author of the poetry collections A Lens in the Palm and The Sleepwalker at Sea.

Read an Excerpt

The Lantern Cage

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By Kelly Grovier

Carcanet Press Ltd

Copyright © 2014 Kelly Grovier
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-906188-24-5

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CHAPTER 1

    Keeping time

    It started by accident:
    a chance pluck

      on the lip
    of a stem-glass filling

    with water. Soon,
    I found the voice
      of all things

    could be sharpened, shaped,
    sculpted to the ear

      of a ghost,
    like me. Before long, I was rosining

    rain, tightening the pitchblack
    of a butterfly's

    scales, tuning
    forks in the road. For a time,

    the universe
      was harmonious,

    strung like a wind-
      chime of bones,

    shadows clicking
    into place, everything, even the stars,

    grooving to the skeleton
    keys of the dead.


    Strange Water

    Scuffing the pebbled
    unpeopled beach

    how much of who we are
    lies scattered

      among the ropes
    of slippering kelp:

      voices
    in unlifted shells,

    unreflected skies in the unreached
    rockpools. Another world

    is all around us,
      shifting

    in undeciphered sands:
    the scrawl

      of seagull shadows
    and the waves' loosening

    grammar, while at your feet
    strange water
      is washing something

    you'll either bend to
    or ignore.


    Sluice

    in memory of Seamus Heaney

    There is a lane, a country turn
    of guelder rose and spindle

    some part of me swerves to
    every time I pass this way –

    two wheel-wide lines
    of gravelly crunch my living ghost

    peels off to meet, tracking
    the hedgerow down to a quiet

    stream-bed I feel is there, rolls
    his sleeve and plunges wrist-deep

    in a babble of waterlight –
    soul soused in a sluice of morning –

    and, once back, scrabbles greedy
    in the slosh (azurite and zinc,

    pyrite and lead) finds himself
    rich again, rich beyond words.


    Rearview

    Someone is having a dream
    about the dark

    variegated eyes of raccoons and elk
    and a long

      perforated road
    that runs between

    the margins
    of bodies – bodies of slumped

    badgers and the bristle
    of a crumpled fox;

    and in the language
      of the dream,

    these violent expirations
    are recognised
      as words,

    arranged
      by the receding

    syntax of the rearview,
      only the story

    they compose is one
    of a ghostly
      breathing, of hooves

    cocked in a gauze
    of ficus and fir;
      it's one of bright

      scratches of leaves
    sparking the autumn

    dusk, and in the distance,
      growing

    stronger through the fog,
    a kind of punctuation,

      whose object
    is larger than it appears.


    The Edge

    Sitting here, watching the moon stream
    and waiting for the stars to shuffle
    their invisible tracks, all this winter evening needs

    is a soundscape – notes to bind the soul
    with strings, rhythm to carry it
    to the very edge of itself. I think about that

    as I struggle to remember what it was
    the mystic Robert Fludd once said
    about music being the only vestige

    of our angelic state – melodies
    suspended in the tar of mind like fossils
    of a lost paradise. Suddenly, the sky changes discs

    and I feel the ambient vibrations of something
    jangling in the distance, moving closer,
    gathering steady like the faint

    knowledge of a place I've been to, mapped
    inside me – an outskirt, whose ghostlit streets
    I recognise, but have no name.


    A Very Short Introduction to Hearing

    Move closer, but be careful
    not to disturb
      the balance –

    the fragile equilibrium
    that keeps
      the universe

    from slipping. Lean in,
    but never so tight

      as to jar the spirit
    level of being. Even

    the inward music
    of a lifted shell,

      whose notes
    are fitted to the mind's

    ear, must first finesse
    the dark

      vestibules of the osseous
    labyrinth, its anvil

      and hammer,
    must first transcend

    a maze of nerve and muscle.

    In a time before us, before
    the inventions

      of silence, sound
    was auxiliary to the technologies

    of jaw, whose brute
    fossils still

      line our temples. Now,
    every syllable is a ghost, every word

    an excavation –

      ancestral, prophetic.
    Be here, but remember

    that hereness
    is merely an echo

      of something past
    and coming – a double,

    the reflection
      of a breathing that occurred
    somewhere else,

    long before,
      and long after.


    King's Hall

    It could hardly have been longer
    than a second,

      staring sleepless
    from the third-floor flat,

    to catch sight of the old man's
    measured stride,

      the swing
    of his walking stick, scruff

    of beard and wasted frame,
    gliding along

      the water's edge
    in the purple

    half-light of a summer's 4 a.m. –
    more like something dreamt

    than living:
      a breathing

    iridescence, an idea.
    And I do not think

    a week has passed
      in the intervening

    years, my mind
      hasn't turned

    to his curious reflex, his unfathered
    eyes, the unmirrorable

    motion of his amphibious gait,
    hasn't read

      into the invisible
    scrawl of his stroke,

      a meaning
    deeper than the pocked sand,

    wondered what smooth formula
    freed the friction

      of sense
    and skin, and looking up,

      reflected
    for an instant

      whose groggy blink
    may have millimetred me

      in a flash
    of accidental grace:

    the moon calculating posture,
    physiques syncing

      to the ungainly
    ocean, the uncoordinated rain.


    Slide

    From where I sit, I can see
    the jetty's slow sloping stairs
    easing into water, children

    spooling crab lines, a fray of salt-
    worn tether and the sodden
    ghosts of a tide: six or seven

    wave-warped steps on which,
    from where I sit, you can see
    the dead emerge at 3 a.m.

    in their sodium-inflected wetsuits
    and awkward gear. They too
    hold hands as they web along

    the prom, staring at the distant
    line where day and night split
    hairs; only the horizon for them

    means something different,
    like returning to a playground
    years later to find the dimensions

    changed, diminished: the space
    between the swing and slide
    growing smaller and smaller.


    Button

    Only because the moon hit it
    square between the eyes

    did I notice the small
    opalescent button

    half-hidden in the grass,
    a few feet from our door.

    Old-style: the kind
    your grandmother fishes

    special from a special box
    for a special cardy she's knitting

    for a special day – a christening,
    or her favourite grandson's special

    school performance.
    I thought of the other

    five or six she'd scrounged for,
    still hanging

    by a thread, and the sprig
    of woollen fray

    that finally let it go,
    and couldn't help wondering

    what it was that did it –
    what sudden gesture

    slipped it loose
    to clatter and roll unnoticed

    from her heart – reaching
    for a locket she'd lost

    years ago, or the slow sign
    of a cross she made

    without thinking,
    one moonless evening,

    a few feet from a stranger's door,
    her crooked fingers trembling

    as she stitched tight
    the four corners of her soul.


    Uncollected

    Stepping from the humid
    laureateship of my shower

    and the head's steady
    indiscriminate applause,

    I wonder how many
    poems have washed away

    in there, etched in steam
    on the steamless mirror –

    only the fleeting punctuation
    of a tissue's corner, dabbed

    into place on the longsuffering
    chin, proof

    of their enduring
    untranscribable genius.


    Squint

    A book borrowed, given, or taken away
      and the gap it leaves on the awkward shelf –
      some words stay back and some were never there;

    like names you half-remember, squint to say,
      whose syllables swerve from the thing itself:
        you're never really here nor quite elsewhere.


    The Last Line

    You there, reading this – whose eyes are heirs
    of mine and mine the ghost of yours –

    whatever you do, don't look ahead or drop
    your gaze to glance at how these lines

    will end. Keep your concentration focused here,
    somewhere in the middle, so that this,

    our slow synchronised stare, will never dissolve
    into the crossed tease of a finished poem,

    so we can continue a little longer the mysterious
    syntax of looking across time – so that I,

    haunting the words you are reading now,
    can still feel the invisible connection of two

    people wondering over the same turn
    of phrase, the same punch-line, that parting shot:

    look up, wherever you are, you've always been.


    Jackdaw

    Out of the blue, night
    drags its smudgy eraser
    over chimneys and trees
    and even a few sheep

    unfinished in the field,
    which, at the best of times,
    are pretty fuzzy. Soon,
    a hand will begin tidying

    the edges, measuring things.
    But for now, the world
    is disappearance –
    jackdaws and darkness

    shaking each other's feathers;
    senses giving way
    to other senses, and words,
    to the opposite of words.


    Slip

    A small slip of paper,
    no larger than the page

    you are holding in your hands,
    is drifting down

      Oxford Street,
    catching, every few steps,

    the back of someone's heel
    or stockinged calf,

      before floating on
    unnoticed by the crowd –

    as though it were a leaf
    that shed itself

      from the book
    of someone's life, sliding

    through his fingers, to bring
    its appalling news

      to the next person
    on its list: someone

    who is just now
    stepping out of a newsagent,

    or exiting the Tube and bending down
    to stop a scrap of litter,

      finds herself
    staring into a maze

    of words that will alter things
    forever,

      making it impossible
    to return home

    or to speak to her husband,
    ever to see her children again

    or visit her parents' graves,
    something so huge

      it could only fit
    on a small slip of paper,

    no larger than the page
    you are holding in your hands.


    The Three Rs

    The world always begins
    with a phrase – instinctive,

    unthinking – an utterance
    from which meaning

    follows only gradually, if ever,
    conjugating itself in water, heat,

    and the reactions trigger
    further reactions: the angle

    of one's heart, long divisions
    of suffering. Somewhere,

    a girl is holding a sign: the name
    of a passenger whose train

    will never arrive. Meanwhile
    I am here, talking to you,

    banging on about the effing
    ineffable, never knowing

    whether a stranger
    in another world, waiting

    on a platform, is ever going
    to spell my name right.


    What Happened

    They were all reading, every one of them –
    eyes pinned to pulp and tabloid, crossword

    or obituary, glossed tat and the op-ed page.
    Each oblivious to the ruck and judder

    of the white-knuckled tracks as we joggled
    to the edge. And this is worth recording,

    I tell you, not for what it says
    about the literate tug of random rails,

    but to register what happened
    when the carriage shuddered short,

    jolting us from our private fictions –
    the phrase and fragment frozen to each face

    composed themselves into a calm – syntactical,
    simultaneous – an eloquent blankness that hung

    an instant in the air, then shattered
    into accents, syllables, prayer.


    The Art of Angling

    for Jacky Klein

    Snapping the covers shut,
    my mind

      is suddenly the air
    that gusts from deep inside

    the spine, as though the book
    has been holding its breath

    for years. I can't help thinking
    of all the other puffs,

      gasping
    between the pages

    on the antiquarian shelves,
    and wonder what good

    might come from flinging
    through the aisles,

      cracking
    the volumes open,

    clapping them closed, one
    by one, tipping

    the crowded cases over –
    the dank air fizzing

    with dust, catching
    the evening sunlight like salmon

    in a late summer's stream.


    The Goldbeater's Arm

    In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens tells
    of 'a quiet street corner, not far

    from Soho Square'
    and 'a building at the back

    where a plane-tree rustled
    its green leaves' – a place where gold

    is 'to be beaten
    by some mysterious giant

    who had a golden arm starting
    out of the wall'. And this is worth

    remembering, should you ever
    find yourself

      pursued by footsteps
    in the final seconds

    of the world: that arm is still
    there, still

      flexed in gilt
    above the old Guild's door.

    And should you barely make it
    breathless to the low

      stone step,
    desperate for the ancient door

    to swing open,
    as a huge hammer looms

    heavy above you,
    think of the others – fifty,

    a hundred yards back –
    who came to Dickens a little too late,

    missing it
    by that much, and looking up,

    will never see the roll
    of its muscular sleeve, its forearm start

    to straighten, the moon
    of its flat head

    flash full,
    as the last star's spark

    sparks out.


    Snakeskin

    For some, the equation is tied
    to the rhythm

      of snowdrops,
    aconites, the slow dilation

    of a winter's iris. For others,
    the frequency

      is more erratic,
    like the formulae

    of sunsets, auroras of autumn,
    skitters of fuchsia

    across a snakeskin sky.
    For me, the theorem remains

    conjectural – the universe,
    too mean

      a margin to prove
    the ellipses of beauty,

    tangents of tears, figures
    whose invisible calculation

    God keeps
    under lough and quay.


    I'll Have a Bite of Yours

    So much talk these days of parallel worlds,
    of string theories and quantum leaps –

    of a universe layered with layers of universes.
    But what could it mean, this endless wedding cake

    of time and space – each of us invisibly
    auditioning each others' lives, inches apart,

    light years? Think of all the shoes. No wonder they come
    in so many sizes. As if it were all a cosmic ceilidh:

    bodies and souls half-cut, looping in a lace
    of sloping arms. I imagine the infinite rehearsals of me,

    and me infinitely rehearsing everyone else:
    seven billion Kellys squared, spinning in galaxies flung

    like caster sugar over rising wheels of fondant, radiused
    with a knife gripped by trembling hands, slicing

    through a chaos of centuries, stars, and you – eyes
      prismed
    beautiful through eternity, their exponential blue

    desperate to know if I am ever gonna share that thing.


    Crossing

    Tonight, the moon invites a sense
    of crossing –

      not of movement
    or journey or the slow conveyance

    of bodies across a dark
    expanse – not the linear equations

    of a to b. As though, in the distance
    of one's self,

      you see
    something ascending a steep slope,

    and with it comes talk
    of an exchange, an acceptance.

    Look at your hands.
    What do you think they're for?


    A Nose for Science

    Bookless, bored, peering into a stranger's newspaper
    on the crowded train, my eye catches on a story

    about a team of scientists in Prague
    digging for the remains of Tycho Brahe.

    I squint in close to read
    how they dragged skeletons from the nave of a church

    in the Old Town Square, dusted the skulls
    for a verdigris ghost haunting the bridge

    between his sockets, looking for evidence
    of the copper prosthetic he wore

    for what was lost in a duel.
    I wonder what they made of it, his bones,

    when the stone floor burst open, spilling
    with light. Did they think it had returned

    after all these centuries, to bring news of strange scents
    wafting from the skies – Hale-Bopps and blitzkrieg,

    black holes, dark matter – a severed sniff forever
    scrunching forward, inch by inch,

    light-year after light-year, still sticking itself
    where it doesn't belong?


    Walking Stewart

    I met him and shook hands with him under Somerset House ...
    Thence I went by the very shortest road (i.e. through Moor
    Street, Soho – for I am learned in many quarters of London)
    towards a point which necessarily led me through Tottenham Court
    Road; I stopped nowhere, and walked fast; yet so it was that in
    Tottenham Court Road I was not overtaken by (thatwas
    comprehensible), but overtook Walking Stewart.

    – Thomas De Quincey, 'Walking Stewart',
    London Magazine, 1822

    Striding through Soho, a stranger waiting
    at the other end, no chance to pause

    and put down the lines you are reading now,
    I find myself thinking of Walking Stewart

    who strolled these streets centuries ago,
    and his belief that we are all anagrams of each other,

    each an endless flux of atoms forever
    rearranging themselves – now composing

    the paragraph of you, now articulating the sentence
    of me – none of us the same expression one moment

    to the next. And I wonder how many molecules
    that once enunciated Stewart are still swirling

    this neighbourhood, as I kitty-corner up Moor Street,
    heading west to Golden Square – wonder

    what proportion of him I might meet, or even be,
    when I arrive. Or perhaps I'll recognise him

    straightaway – a semblance of myself, an alternate
    spelling of a person I once was or will one day be –

    like reading for the first time a poem whose words
    you know you know by heart – its syllables scribbled

    in your blood – though no one's ever stopped
    to write them down.


    The Angle

    after Rilke

    Given a choice between the sun
    that rises from inside us,

    or the sea that comes to life
    like an old memory,

    the gull will always pick the angle
    of crust. For there is nothing

    that we've been or must unlearn
    that the waves haven't told us –

    nothing that the dawn can hide
    under its wrinkled skin. Pinch the sand

    between your toes; the world is aching
    to know if it's dreaming.


    The Edwin Smith Papyrus

    for Anthony Mosawi

    When word came, we rugged the humps, grabbed our flasks,
      set off in pairs under an aching skull
      of stars across the desert. There were risks,
      true, but not going was riskier still.

    It took the parched throat of three days to reach
      the wind-shattered obelisks of Luxor –
      its granite needle – and two more to touch
      the crumbling lips of the thing we'd come for:

    an ancient weave of pith and soot-soaked wax –
      seventeen leaves of fragile hieroglyph
      fixed in incense, ochre and gum to coax
      diseases from the body, dying from life.

    These were the pharaoh's physician's secrets,
      we were assured, silent for centuries –
      a lost calculus for adding spirits
      to salve, mapping the brain, suturing eyes.

    We haggled hard for those illegible
      rags, then slid a purse across the table,
      loped back beneath an incorrigible
      moon that turned our shadows to syllable.

    Now, everything I am inflects the earth
      as atoms, pixels, ghosts on an X-ray –
      a loosening helix of rhyme whose worth
      vibrates invisibly in the mind's eye.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Lantern Cage by Kelly Grovier. Copyright © 2014 Kelly Grovier. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page,
Dedication,
Epigraph,
Acknowledgements,
Keeping time,
Strange Water,
Sluice,
Rearview,
The Edge,
A Very Short Introduction to Hearing,
King's Hall,
Slide,
Button,
Uncollected,
Squint,
The Last Line,
Jackdaw,
Slip,
The Three Rs,
What Happened,
The Art of Angling,
The Goldbeater's Arm,
Snakeskin,
I'll Have a Bite of Yours,
Crossing,
A Nose for Science,
Walking Stewart,
The Angle,
The Edwin Smith Papyrus,
Lines on a Da Vinci Skull,
The Music Lesson,
The Wanderer,
Vertical Horizons,
1. Doric Light,
2. Four Dark Mirrors,
3. Doric Brown,
Rushlight,
Yellow Light Folding,
Orrery,
On the Koi-ness of Time,
The Last Almanac,
A Treatise Concerning the Perception of Ghosts,
Puddles,
The Lantern Cage,
Singlings,
The Lemures,
On Missing the Cherry Blossoms,
Irish Fish,
Table Saw,
Be Right Back,
About the Author,
Also by Kelly Grovier from Carcanet/OxfordPoets,
Copyright,

Editorial Reviews

A poet of real humility, who listens to his words and guides them into place.”  —Times Literary Supplement

“Grovier’s poetry at its best is formidable: the marriage of music and mind.”  —Alison Brackenbury, Poetry Wales

“Grovier’s poems are often amusing and childlike. . . . The narrators may fret, but Grovier’s craft stills poem and reader inside a ‘slip-knot of stars.’”  —New Welsh Review

“William Blake for the 21st century.”  —Planet Magazine

From the Publisher