{"id":254,"date":"2026-05-05T18:39:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T22:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/?p=254"},"modified":"2026-05-05T18:39:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T22:39:35","slug":"that-poem-which-i-like-is-going-to-come-back-into-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/that-poem-which-i-like-is-going-to-come-back-into-style\/","title":{"rendered":"That Poem Which I Like Is Going To Come Back Into Style"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

follow up to a poem which I like<\/a> (“The next step (of course) is to request Nature With Man<\/em> from the university library.”)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Moss
Jon Silkin<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Patents’ will burn it out; it would lie there
Turning white. It shelters on the soil; quilts it.
So persons lie over it; but look closely:
The thick, short green threads quiver like an animal
As a fungoid quivers between that and vegetable:
A mushroom’s flesh with the texture and consistency of a
kidney.

Moss is soft as a pouch.
There are too many shoots, though, boxed compacted,
Yet nestling together,
Softly luminous.
They squirm minutely. The less compact kind
Has struggling white flowers; closed,
Like a minute bell’s clapper;
So minute that opened then, its stretch seems wide.
The first grows in damper places.
With what does it propagate?
Quiet, of course, it adheres to
The cracks of waste-pipes, velvets,
Velours them; an enriching
Unnatural ruff swathing the urban ‘manifestation’;
The urban nature is basemented, semi-dark;
It musts, it is alone.

Here moss cools; it has no children;
It amplifies itself.
Could that over-knit fiction of stubbed threads reproduce
Defined creatures?
It hovers tentatively between one life and another,
Being the closed-road of plants,
Its mule; spreads only its kind –
A soft stone. It is not mad.

Reared on the creeping dankness of earth
It overspreads, smears, begrudges something
Though it is passive; spreads wildly.
It is immune to nothing;
You cannot speak of misery to it.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n


Sikin, Jon. Nature With Man<\/em> (Chatto and Windus Ltd with The Hogarth Press Ltd, 1965), 47-48.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

follow up to a poem which I like (“The next step (of course) is to request Nature With Man from the university library.”) MossJon Silkin ‘Patents’ will burn it out; it would lie thereTurning white. It shelters on the soil; quilts it.So persons lie over it; but look closely:The thick, short green threads quiver like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[69,72],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-jon-silkin","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions\/255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btphotographer.com\/postdraft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}