FIONA SAMPSON

Deep Water

Water levels still rising as thousands hit by worst floods
in modern British history. - The Guardian 24/7/07


While rain thrums on the roof
of the Cobalt Unit

you lie motionless, as directed,
in its womb-tight scanner.

The young radiologist counts down
and you think, I’m flying –

your rick-rack bones opening,
their long-drawn white

becoming pinions,
everything ratcheting out, peg after peg

into wing-tips,
afloat
on streaming black.

That black thuds and races
between your ribs –

and a pillow bunches hard against the ear
where blood roars
like floodwater
rising between contour-lines –

the floods you must get home through.

Milling dark your skeleton
dowses from this afternoon scan,

out of the hammering MRI machine,
its reverb and yammer.

*

A chalk spine
lies above these collapsed roads and trees,

choric bystanders
and cars doomed to muddy rivers.

Continually in sight, the Downs
slash a transverse elevation

through levelled fields
and water –

The high hills,
always with us
like inequity, mauvais chance,

the clatter of bad news
in a consulting room.

In limestone pastures, though,
everything shifts with the water table

whose grit slips yellow
from your tap,

stinks when you open the car bonnet
to the sun.

*

Imagine the spine’s
fossil curve:
how it sinks a hook into the dark.

Seahorse remnant, residual ammonite.

Seep, silt, the pelvic crescent’s
alluvial sex smell –

darknesses, compressed

as fear compresses,
to drift-shapes, fish mouthed

on ocean floors,
half-recognisable
in some black-and-white dream.

The mineral spine
ground feather-thin,


eroded by air-stream dark
to an archaic lace,

like figures raised in grainy stone
among alders –

whose dark silhouettes
stud the flood-water –

spires prayer climbs past,

breath
floating free of everything mineral,

rising from this bedroom:
where curtains

keep out the night-whisper of rain
and gather a flexible dark.

Lavinia Zainea

Ape adanci

Nivelul apelor e in crestere in timp ce mii de oamenii au fost atinsi de cele mai puternice inundatii
din istoria recente a Marii Britanii - The Guardian 24/7/07

In timp ce ploaia bate în acoperisul
Unitatii Cobalt

ramai nemiscata, cum ti s-a spus,
in scanerul strans ca un pantec.

Tanarul radiolog numara descrescator
si te gandesti, Zbor-

oasele tale in zigzag se deschid,
albul lor prelungit

se transforma in aripi
totul se descompune, bucata cu bucata

în varfuri de aripa,
plutind
intr-o mare intunecata.

Intunericul iti patrunde in coaste,
cu un zgomot surd-

si o perna iti strange puternic urechea
unde sangele zvacneste
ca un suvoi de apa
ce se ridica dincolo de limite-

Suvoaiele peste care trebuie sa treci ca sa ajungi acasa.

Crestand intunericul, scheletul
ti se scufunda departe de aceasta scanare de dupa-amiaza

de aparatul zgomotos de RMN,
de rasunetele si gemetele sale.

*
Conturul unei siri a spinarii
se profileaza deasupra acestor drumuri si copaci prabusiti,
spectatori zgomotosi
si masini care-si gasesc sfarsitul in rauri mlastinoase.

Mereu la vedere, dealurile
taie o elevatie transversala

printre trenurile nivelate
si apa-
Dealurile inalte,
Mereu alaturi de noi
precum nedreptatea, mauvais chance,

vacarmul de vesti rele
intr-un cabinet medical.

Dar, pe taramuri de calcar
totul se schimba odata cu panza freatica

al carui nsip curge galben
din robinetul tau,

pute cand deschizi capota
in soare.

*

Imagineaza-ti curba ca de fosila
a sirei spinarii:
cum isi infige un carlig in intuneric.

Ramasita de cal de mare, amonit rezidual.

Infiltreza, astupa, mirosul aluvial în crestere de sex
al pelvisului-

intunecimi, comprimate

asa cum frica poate comprima,
spre forme alunecoase, cu guri de peste

pe fundul oceanului,
care abia se discern
intr-un vis alb-negru.

Terenul sirei minerale a spinarii
subtire ca o pana,

erodat de intunericul pulverizant
pana la o dantela arhaica,

precum figuri facute din roca granulata
printre anini-

ale caror siluete intunecate
fixeaza varfurile deasupra suvoiului de apa

rugaciunea trece de ele,

adierea
plutind departe de tot ce e mineral,

venind dinspre acest dormitor:
unde perdelele

tin la distanta soapta nocturna a ploii
si fauresc un intuneric flexibil.