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Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2020: Watchmen
by Laura Potts
This poem follows the format set by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin in her poem 'Swineherd'. A herdsman imagines a time in the post-pandemic future when he can enjoy the simple fact of being alive. He makes a series of simple vows - listen to cream rising in a milk jug and count the trees in an orchard - to better appreciate his existence. I took my lockdown companion, my cat, and wrote a similar verse from her perspective.
Poetry Archive Now Wordview 2020: Watchmen
After Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
When all this is over, thought the watchman,
I shall take to my garden, where
the light will be long as tomorrow
and the larks will not depart from me.
I shall lay on my lawn, lord of the morning,
and shed my black self, my shadow.
My watchlights will fill with the glisten of wings,
the tinkle of wrens on the terrace.
My whiskers will lift on the lip of the wind
and I’ll swing to the stars from the trellis.
When all this is done, thought the watchman,
and I stand at the gate of the day
my garden will never know absence.
My swallows and sparrows will stay.
Recording provided as part of Poetry Archive Now: Wordview 2020. Used by permission of the author. Photograph by James Hudson Photography
A special thank you to our WordView 2020 poets.
Chair of the Judging Panel, Imtiaz Dharker, says: “The hundreds of entries we received blew in to the Archive like a breath of pure, unpolluted air from all over the world, revealing something of the time we are living in, some telling it straight, some slant. It was exciting to check in to the Poetry Archive’s Youtube channel every morning and come upon one unexpected voice after another."
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