Thread: Oliver Murray
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Unread 01-25-2004, 09:24 AM
Tim Murphy Tim Murphy is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2000
Location: Fargo ND, USA
Posts: 13,816
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I am reading a book length manuscript from one of our members, Oliver Murray. Like Clive, Oliver writes freely and formally, and I'd appreciate your comments on this poem in free verse.

What Marks We Leave


On my grandfather's turf-bog
the sides of the dug pits are black
and oily as fruitcake, where the spades
have cut the peat’s face and every move
of cloud is noted in the straight-carved pools.

My grandfather was a policeman
who’d learned shorthand, to take
crop records and witness statements
in times of civil war and land disputes,
noting property boundaries,
and where the dead lay.
On this bog he struck down to a hard leaf
that lay, interrupting the thin layers of time.
He washed the clogged metal clean
of the dark gruel of the peat.
then cycled sixteen miles to the police station.

The bronze-age cloak-pin of fine-beaten gold
with its repeating curve design has been
in the Museum for nearly a hundred years
It never bore his name, and shorthand
is like a memory of an ancient language,
a code tapped between enthusiasts.
But somewhere, some marks he made
must still be left, deep in the black water,
below the surface that, patiently,
without prejudice, records the sky.


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