this bungled joy

Have been thinking a lot about John Burnside's poetry, over the last few days; sadly all prompted by the reporting of his death ...

... I've always really liked his work, and here's a favourite (that I have blipped before) taken from his excellent 2007 volume:


Afterlife

When we are gone
our lives will continue without us

– or so we believe and,
at times, we have tried to imagine

the gaps we will leave being filled
with the brilliance of others:

someone else gathering plums
from this tree in the garden,

someone else thinking this thought
in a room filled with stars

and coming to no conclusion
other than this –

this bungled joy, this inarticulate
conviction that the future cannot come

without the grace
of setting things aside,

of giving up
the phantom of a soul

that only seemed to be
while it was passing.

---

John Burnside (1955 - 2024)

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