Peter Riley
WEEKEND
Saturday
Lay-figures
and amateurs, we
elicit
from the bone core
of the eclipse
a streak of sense
from the heart of the frying-pan
a clear directive
straight across the worktop
whereby we are told and indeed know
exactly what
to do.
Good.
Sunday
And since we care for the
messenger people there’s
no compunction
but skirting the field our
sentences divide us,
we mount hes-
itantly (‘us’ is a strange movement
from skin to bone) up
to the gently curving eminence we’re
offered on, utterly amazed
at what we’ve done
to what we’ve done
for good.
Saturday
Lay-figures
and amateurs, we
elicit
from the bone core
of the eclipse
a streak of sense
from the heart of the frying-pan
a clear directive
straight across the worktop
whereby we are told and indeed know
exactly what
to do.
Good.
Sunday
And since we care for the
messenger people there’s
no compunction
but skirting the field our
sentences divide us,
we mount hes-
itantly (‘us’ is a strange movement
from skin to bone) up
to the gently curving eminence we’re
offered on, utterly amazed
at what we’ve done
to what we’ve done
for good.
Copyright © Peter Riley
Peter Riley’s Collected Poems, published by Shearsman Books in 2018 in two volumes, covers his work from the early 1960s to today, encompassing books such as Love-Strife Machine, The Linear Journal, The Llyn Writings, The Derbyshire Poems (including Lines on the Liver and Tracks and Mineshafts), Noon Province, Reader, Lecture, Author and Snow has Settled, Excavations, Alstonefield, Two Setts and Coda, The Glacial Stairway, Greek Passages and Due North. Both volumes also contain a large number of uncollected poems. Peter Riley reviews poetry regularly for the website The Fortnightly Review and his own website is at aprileye.co.uk. His work appeared in both print issues of Molly Bloom, 1980 and 1982, and subsequently in online issues 1 and 5.