Heather H. Yeung is a critic, poet, and artist book maker, currently hailing from Scotland. An archive of her artists book works is held in the Scottish Poetry Library.
Archipelago – the islands of the sea; the sea which connects the islands; the sea, the sky; and on clear days that blue… – this poet hails from two such places: the archipelago of Orkney, the Hong-Kong archipelago. Different latitudes, different longitudes, different climates. But perhaps it does make sense that this poet should come at some point to the origin point of the archipelagic imaginary – the blue of the Mediterranean – remain there for quite some time, and (often) return, and (often) remember ‘island-hopping’ and looking across the blue sea-borders there.“Forcefire :: Naufrages” is an excerpt from a long poetic sequence currently in progress, Archipelago.
(An t-Samhain, 2021)
Pasolini
Feather.
Solitary.
Pale.
Such fall
can be enough
to confuse perception. Once only
one group of voices or waymarkers
wrote in code wishes for an aegis,
wrote thoughts of beginnings or singularities
as shipwreck, that all greatness or illumination begins
with a boat,
its metaphor,
(for those with that quill in hand, Sirius raves
did you even hear of that greatblending moment
in the wrong sky, and ainsi
qu’on fait partout naufrage dans un ruisseau… quoi ?
a setting out
with little attention to darknesses
crashing between. They judged
burned
codes to airfurled ashes as if wishes
might take life from thought dashing a sky with gold
dashing what wreck there was to what shore was there –
an aegis if only they knew how to look and
the ritual danger disappearance wished would enforce
what was considered truthmaking meaning or method or mode
which was neither truth nor true meaning nor method nor singular
İlyas and Hızır cough
they are deserted here as
the year has turned as usual
they look askance
at such poorly hidden wishes and gold
thrown amongst the late colchicums,
roses, so different
from their fine shoots
their spring dust aside scant rivulets,
they wonder or ask
at the interruption of the dyad
by the season or this
old fair idyll of needfire)
Water rising interrupts
I begin to hear in gullwhite flashes
high laughter at the particularity of the wreckwork
the wings will always work, do not precipitate philosophical failure
in polyphony
commentary truer to my own and
hover adrift
and shifting with the mist look up
( and yes you cannot hear or write
but see only the fireflies
whose disappearance has stung like teargas
on all but this night when we speir for them
through haar’s glimlightening and there –
It is this, then to possess finally the right of way
or to be islanded again
if only for the moments we know this island,
if only for the moments forcefire’s benediction and border
lasts, our time tethered to the thin moment
of a world before an after
and yes here –
)
in praise
of the expected Samhain topologies
when the haar
rolls in, the bonds
holding space become
its dimmer borders and colour
though watery atmospheres refracts
stranger shapes, limb tangled in limb,
in frictive warmth or is it some form of particular light
familiar only as lunulae
and all auguries
blessed to fire by sleeptrails native to this space
or shipwreck your starting point (or was it
‘ship’) is perhaps forgotten
and when in any case more ingredients
for this counterpoint were necessary
viz. ‘patience’ (and all associated sayings)
for the right winds, for the upheaval of departure
] ερον ἰξο[μ
for what stars are still visible through the heavengiven
mists to show what planned passage might be, or, if no passage
is planned (for this can, too, be intent) that its route
skyharp swiftshifting be happed in a new light
necessary too a stemming
of an impulse to not delay
refuse blood sacrifice but allow for libations
holdfast against those who minister to jealous gods
never run on this night with the hunt of such gods
remember but do not fetishise your roots and if you know
yourself enough be equipped to move on the searoutes
in wildness to stray from those first-inscribed wish-coded paths
this stream of thought
planted by impulse
here –
the heart or breath in suspended function; woods stream
what is never lux aeterna and mosses glim
in this softness which is no practicable isthmus (as with
the trade-winds we do not wait on this
night or island)
the boat (metaphor) that was long ago wrecked on the shoals
of the island (indeterminate) as fuel, flare, petition
of non disturbance, of lightning, and those old resonances
or instructions for assembly
to think of you or
to think then again of you
]πάνται[
in gold
and of course the hesitation –
the possible –
scant refractions of your dialectical shift (disaster)
or freedom (astral)
or fatalism (this
breath caught over a precipice
not silted through
memories of desert sand, nor towers, nor lighthouses,
nor bombardments, nor sherded masses, nor satellites where
somewhere else those things continue to blink
somewhere else the wild hunt continues
and the feis of the turning year continues
and the moon draws waterways in new directions
and all other forms of bewitching
binding
γαῖα πολυστέφανος [
betwixt which we
in this wooded semicircle whose bounds not visible burn
what it is to fall in the moment through to the thin places
forgetting the other bodies wrecked on the strand and even
their names (your own the first); for them the island is necessary
but for you the ways between are a resting place
in which the daylight holds colour differently,
and time, and
and in swiftseconds clear, astray and
held only before the island
disappears, after the old
shipwreck’s
needfire’s
firewood burns out
its protection, precipitate to which we
speech divested
before the soul
will move overwinter in climes more habitual
discrete
blushing an old-gold of safran
– or –
blinking away the dust of the fireflies
return where a solitary feather
falls
and is
recognised
)
For other contributions by Heather H. Yeung, please follow the link below:
Poetry in this post: © Heather H. Yeung
Photo by Ingrid Apaydin
Published with the permission of Heather H. Yeung