But what when language fails us? or do we fail the language like some terrible exam that passes us as human? When words refuse to come or hide in strange disguises, when dancing shapes in air, those recombining patterns no longer yield their sense to ear or eye or lips or fingertips; on the strand of wordlessness are those people still our people whom language has forgotten whom we tend with careful terror?
From a sequence taking all its titles from the poems of W.S. Graham. Kathleen McPhilemy’s most recent poetry collection is The Lion in the Forest (Katabasis, London 2004). She lives in Oxford.