The Knowledge

Robert Peake

• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780993120114
• eBook ISBN: 9781911027010
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Robert Peake's incredible eye for detail illuminates a collection of stirring and delicately attuned poems that not only roam but actively seek – travelling far and wide to all manner of places but also moving through time, taking leaps of faith or journeys into memory and sensation.

From postcards to portraits, from ancient and modern wars to cosmopolitan cities, wildlife, and even a tiny ornamental skeleton, Robert Peake finds a sharp focus for the bigger picture both far and wide and closer to home. These carefully-controlled and eloquent poems know the subtle and deep consequences from each small gesture; the ripple-effect across each story, the altering of lives and history; the still, quiet centre from which it all begins.

Robert Peake is a British-American poet living near London. His newest short collection is The Silence Teacher (Poetry Salzburg, 2013). His previous short collection was Human Shade (Lost Horse Press, 2011).

The Argument

White Pigeons

are not doves. They do not stand

for peace, but flock and swoop

above my head in the blue before dawn.

They are a liquid in the air,

elastic, bunching and swarming

like oil drops on water.

I do not want to know the physics.

I do not want to make a documentary.

I stand and watch them ripple like a flag.

The soldier inside me wants to salute.

The prophet takes it for a sign.

They double-back, like a bed sheet, folded.

And then they dip below the tree line,

leaving their absence to hang in the air.

I never wished they were more than they were.

A mourning dove now sounds his call to prayer.

A red-tailed hawk lords over mousing fields.

I have heard some call all pigeons wingèd rats.

But these were different, bred to home,

which means that they were practising,

and work never seemed as elegant as this.

Tie a message to my foot. I will assume

my place in the aerial formation. Let me

be a single snowflake in that flurry.

Still Life with Bougainvillea

The bougainvillea taps

at the window, and you

are gone. The cat watches

over the path where you

might return. I watch

the cat, and the small

flowers inside the flowers,

as they brush the pane.

On the cat, there are fleas.

In the flowers, flowers.

In me, your absence drums its

fingers at the points

where I notice my pulse, taps

its beak against the bars

of my chest. Small creature

in my own creature body,

white flowers enveloped in red.

Amuse-Bouche

A dollop of cream from your own

mother’s milk, seasoned with tears

from the first girl you kissed,

garnished with coarse-cut parsley,

served in a snail’s shell.

Lint from your best-loved jumper

sprinkled with grains of a childhood sandbox,

wax shavings from your preschool crayons

nettles from the banks of the pollywog pond

all arranged in a favourite lunch pail.

Of course, for dessert, we have madeleines,

to dip in a tea made of vapour and dust,

sweet-smelling, like the home of your elderly aunt,

which dissolve upon contact and waking. Go ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• The Argument
• Postcards from the War Hospital
• The Smoke
• Acknowledgments