Listen to the poem here

The world is big
but I would like it bigger still,
more different not less.
Maps show that there’s
still room for one large island
or small continent.
Within, let us suppose,
a people with another calendar,
new names for stars, and constellations
patterned on the shapes
of animals and plants
we’ve not encountered yet.
(The contralope, let’s say,
or else the peeping duck,
the two-toed toad
and then the dipsodillo bush
which moves ten yards
over a century.)
Complexions which we’re unaccustomed
to chime out upon the faces
of the men and women
when you make your mutual discovery,
as they assemble round you on the beach
displaying every shade of blue.
You will find out
they greet each other touching feet.
They have no clocks,
but they have trained
their dogs to softly howl the hours.
They have a way of telling fortunes
based on the bends the river waters
make when one steps in.
They have a form of speaking
called the disconjunctive
which we will never truly understand.
They carve out poems on the
bark of trees
and hang them in the branches.
“A ten-bark tree” is what they call
someone or something
that is much loved.
When sunset comes
some feel an urge
to dance wherever they may be –
lawns, streets or beaches,
porches, benches, tables,
bath-tubs, ladders, window ledges,
unicycles, boats – and while the sky
is flushing, their numbers
grow and grow.
“You’re only dancing well,” they say,
“when you make everyone around you
feel they must join in.”
They make great dives,
from off their cliffs.
“Blue into blue is ecstasy”, they say.
They have designed
musical instruments
with the most complex shapes.
The biggest, having the
span of eight of our pianos,
and thrice as tall,
is laid out when a storm arrives.
The rain and winds
drive surprising music
from its multifold appendages –
flute-chutes, adjusting bells, song-gongs,
murmur pools, gurgoyles and vibro-sieves,
just to name a few.
“Nothing can outperform
the sky,” they say.
So many other things are
there to chance upon
if you’re inclined to stop and look.
They also say, “the world
is big, our minds
should be so too”.

 

Phillip Hill 2018