Variation on a line By Bevil Luck

Variation on a line

‘Dark leaves that flick to silver in the gust’
And the fronded moon, the hooting dove,
And silver patches past the trees,
Where other paths, veined with mauve
Have fallen gently into rust,
And an unquiet heart in all this peace.

The hush of evening stills the air,
Blue light is falling in the moss
And fell between the branches' hands
Where the scent had gathered close,
And like a woven cot the floor
Is striped and crossed with silver bands.

To fall into the quiet bloom
Of twilight is destruction. I came
From the purple cliffs and dawn to this
Dark oasis. I hear the rain
Renew the earth in wooded gloom
And ask, “What mystery is this?”

But no voice calls through shrouded leaves
Or speaks behind the battered elm
To say “though green and full of balm
The quiet woods can overwhelm
And past what any ear perceives
There is a blank inhuman psalm.”

Bevil Luck was born and grew up in the Fowey Valley in Cornwall. He read English at Merton College, Oxford before completing his doctorate on the poetry of F.T. Prince in 2019 at the University of Southampton. He now lives and works in Oxford. His verse-translation of the twelfth century song Leu chansonet’ e vil by Giraut de Bornelh was published in Delos in autumn 2018. Original poems have also appeared this year in The Brazen Head and Ekstasis Magazine.