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  • I Leave This at Your Ear
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I Leave This at Your Ear

W. S. Graham

For Nessie Dunsmuir

I leave this at your ear for when you wake,
A creature in its abstract cage asleep.
Your dreams blindfold you by the light they make.

The owl called from the naked-woman tree
As I came down by the Kyle farm to hear
Your house silent by the speaking sea.

I have come late but I have come before
Later with slaked steps from stone to stone
To hope to find you listening for the door.

I stand in the ticking room. My dear, I take
A moth kiss from your breath. The shore gulls cry.
I leave this at your ear for when you wake.


W. S. Graham

New Collected Poems, edited by Matthew Francis (Faber, 2004)

Reproduced by permission of the Estate of W.S. Graham

Tags:

dreams sleeping Surrealism
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W. S. Graham1918 - 1986

W.S. Graham was a Scottish poet who spent most of his life in Cornwall. His work was a quest for integrity of communication, and he is praised for his ‘spare and elliptical beauty of voice’.
More about W. S. Graham

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