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Discontinuity
Discontinuity - Christine De Luca
This is a 'seize the day' poem dealing with the ambivalences of love. It is set on a deserted beach in Shetland where I had found a big heart-shaped stone and had set it up high in a cleft of the cliff and hoped to find it when next I visited. The islands have a complex geology with fault lines and discontinuities. Most words are onomatopoeic: ta wael is to select; sandiloo is the ringed plover; ta greet is to weep; the lnabrak is the surge of breakers on the shore.
Discontinuity
I could blame da wye da sea is smoothed
da steyns; da sylk o touch, da waelin, laevin;
an will da haert be dere whin I come back?
Or I could blame da saandiloo. He wis clear
whit wye ta geng: dis wye noo, nae luikin
owre your shooder. Tide dusna wait;
see da wye da swill o joy is drained.
Dance daday. Damoarn you slip
inta eternity.
Or I could blame da hush at fills you
til you’re lik ta burst wi aa da wirds
at could be said but you hadd back.
Hit’s whit happens whan you step
in time, but sense a fault-line vimmerin
trowe you: dis side or dat?
Only da sea can greet an sing at da sam time:
shade an licht; cobalt, ultramarine an dan
da lnabrak – a tize, a frush o whicht.
from Dat Trickster Sun: Poems (Mariscat Press, 2014), © Christine De Luca 2014, used by permission of the author