Coming Forth By Day

Gabriel Levin

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781847772688
• eBook ISBN: 9781847775542
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Gabriel Levin's new collection breaks new ground in its formal experimentation as well as in its exploration of remote corners of the Mediterranean. The long title poem is written from the multiple perspectives of the personages in Courbet's large painting The Artist's Studio. Courbet's realism blends with ancient eastern mythologies, including the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which gives the collection its title. In another long poem, 'Balthazar's Field', the poet walks the length and breadth of Patmos, seeking out the hidden and the heterogeneous: 'the cave of St John, a Greek priestess's inscription carved on a stone, the rock rose / nestled in its alms of soil'. The book concludes with an extended meditation on modern music ( cored marvels of pitch') written in homage to the composer Alexander Goehr.

BALTHAZAR’S FIELD

Hold down

the snooze light to tell

the time, near at hand and hard

to grasp, the alarm

slips off the nightstand

while the telltale surf

blubbers in my ear The Thought that Dwells

in the Light, hard

to reconcile yesterday’s flight

over the Alps’ crystal

ball – snaggletoothed snowcaps

I vainly crushed

my nose against the Plexiglas

to gaze down at –

with this morning’s braying

ass (stranded in mustard

and crown daisies, my very own

Balthazar I’ll hazard

to crown later in the day)

who prompts me to unlatch

the shutters: O give us innocent water,

write it down – Hölderlin! –

before madness runs up the clock,

rattles body and soul, give us pinions,

though for my part

the sparrow’s timid flutter

and dart under the balcony will do,

the two of us

clueless of things

to come.

Do you know the Very Rich Hours

in which, glancing up to see the voice,

John in ground lapis

lazuli with gold-pricked margins

has that fixed, attentive

skyward gaze you fancy

on the face of every stenographer?

The illuminist knew his trade.

Les Très Riches Heures

coaxing mineral and plant mixed with gum

into tinctures of transport,

though the yawning pit might swallow

you up at the flick

of a wrist. Sitting on his bald

scallop of a rock, proud

as the billy-goat

on its crag above the bay,

I’d followed the sign, ‘footpath

to the Apokalypsi 100 m

left’ – wonders are many – till thunderclaps

drove me back down

to the Delfini,

and when the rains relented

I thought I could hear Balthazar

braying for companionship,

and tramped out the length

of the bay, which heaved

in its harness, to stretch

a truth – since the Graces

honour the far-fetched.

And there he stood,

white-bellied, furry-eared, finely lashed

charcoal eyes, chomping at

the same stubble patch,

before raising his muzzle to speak

of the traffic between the living

and the uncoarsened dead:

‘There’s no knowing

(he said) when your clock

might get punched for good’, and I shrank back

and choked for one seized

on the instant, and turned round

and stomped on the sea wrack

bleached by the sun along the crescent

row of tamarisks shading

the cove of Meloi,

and the skies opened and what I took

for a pair of snorkels

bobbing on the waves in the near

distance turned into loopy fowl

that took flight, flapping

their wings dementedly,

homing in on the shoreline

before the shifting winds

zipped the clouds up again,

and I thought of the Very Rich

Hours and how the lone,

turbanned figure in his bark

feathered his oars mid-journey

between the barren refuge

and New Jerusalem,

all fluted crystal and acid dream,

and I marvelled at the sight,

though I knew it to be only a likeness

in the mind, that lightning mould –

should I take the local archimandrite

at his word – of divine presence.

But this being the month of May

I could see from my hill...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• ACROSS THE NARROWS
• BALTHAZAR’S FIELD
• UNVEILED IN JERUSALEM
• ‘MY WORN PAMPHLETS CLOSED AGAIN ON THE NAME PAPHOS’
• COMING FORTH BY DAY
• THE ORPHIC EGG
• Notes
• Copyright