Rowland Bagnall

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The Sunlight Falls Partly in a Cup

and tomorrow the same,
and then still the same
and then not. I detect a slip
between seasons, from autumn
to another, less-full kind of autumn,
still humming with a loose control
as if to stave off the inevitable.
What I mean to say is, for the most
part you see nothing: a clueless sky,
a shadow thickening the walls, an all but
empty street that seems to widen to include you.
And here’s the creak of branches against
other branches. And here’s a well-proportioned
view of the whole town, resting silently
at night, waiting for us. Come on and
feel precise. Come on and feel this
CGI-style rain, falling in unnumbered
threads, and the Impressionist rustling
of the leaves as you pass over them,
as in a short dream of a forest floor
you’ll certainly forget. I equip a battered
leather shield. The skateboarders begin
to glow. Beneath my window is
a heavy vase of scentless artificial
flowers, amazingly lifelike, and
behind them the street, in which
what light there is seems of the shallow
underwater kind. Why so many white
Toyotas? Is there anything Rembrandt
didn’t know? While we’re at it: what’s with
all these particles of soon-to-be extinguished
air, shimmering like cells viewed through
an optical device? They live in one sun, we
in another, pressing the glass as if to whisper,
That’s right, when we go, we’re taking you
with us. I sense a gentle phasing out.
I imagine a body pulling its history from
the ground, examining each strand as if with
shaky recognition. You get the picture: crammed
with imperfections but in its own way beautiful,
staggering even, like an unspecified canopy,
stretching out for miles into the adjective-resistant dark.

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ROWLAND BAGNALL is a poet and writer based in Oxford. He is currently enrolled as a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. His first collection, A Few Interiors, was published by Carcanet Press in 2019 — www.rowlandbagnall.com