Meteor Shower
by Amali Rodrigo
And now in age I bud again
George Herbert
The last fixed thing I saw, a fall of ash and moth-wing,
not ready for old hungers and
your whisper in the pure dark: like sperm racing
towards a cosmic egg.
Once plunderers, now lost, scratching runes on stone,
in this virtuosity of skin on skin
all shapes burn and break, fingertips in tiny voids
of dimples and folds, a palm over
the ribs’ insignia – the habit of knowing one thing
through another: and a day long ago
when night rain barely hung on spruce boughs,
constellations marooned, trembling
as every tenderness through which a man can vanish,
the body extinct, the who of it
as now, no longer seed silo, not yet an urn of ash
but a pure toll of an ancient singing
bowl from us, padded hammer on lip, endless circum
navigation,
a single note ransacking the furthest reaches. We are
younger than the river, older than the sky
Amali Rodrigo was born and grew up in Sri Lanka. She has lived in Mozambique, Kenya, India and is now in London. She’s widely published and has won several prizes in international poetry competitions. She is also the recipient of the Princess Alexandra medal from Lancaster University where she is currently a PhD candidate. Her first collection Lotus Gatherers is forthcoming from Bloodaxe in 2016.