Vaughan Pilikian

Vaughan Pilikian is a poet. He has published four collections: At Eclipse (2001), Lyrics (2009), Book of Days (2018) and Tierce (2024).

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O the narrowest tract

O the narrowest tract,

the hemmed

wilderness:

may you flourish,

o may you thrive.

See the brambles

rising, cresting

the fences, curving

ever higher,

see them rising

on the swathe,

see them shaped

on the green wave,

burgeoning and breaking

with life.

Fecund:

see them rise,

see them strangling the palings,

see them bluing through the dusk.

May your thistles and nettles

bristle, gnarl and twist:

thrive o thrive.

May you thrive.

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That light flows

That light flows,

that it burns at the edges with all else dark,

that it makes sacred,

that unseen in the hollow

the ivy and sycamore

entwine,

that others fall across us

like seeds, like snowflakes, scattering and melting,

that you are you,

you and no one else,

like others but not quite the same,

that I do not know you, that I will never

know you, that the birdflight

comes in low, thud of wings, pulse in the dimming,

releasing us, telling us of

another way, another place,

that you walked out of the house,

that you entered the ocean

a fledgling, a tiny thing,

that the ocean entered you, a glittering vastness,

that you dreamt of drowning,

that you feared it, fell into it,

wished for where the waves would go,

that the waves went where you wished they would,

that pomegranates and apples will grow ripe,

some for us, but most

not for us,

that all things blossom and fall and blossom

and fall,

that blossom flutters as it falls,

that it all goes, it goes and it was nothing

and it was for nothing.

That these few words might hold all of this,

some of this,

almost, if only

for a time.

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Some strange night fire

Some strange

night fire,

very cold,

torments me.

Half-

drowned

in the menace and the wonder

I ask:

can I yet

anchor myself

to you?

Can you pull me back?

O miracle.

So far:

never further.

How the distance between us

fills us.

Lamplight so cautious,

held forth,

trembling,

if only to try

to imagine you by.

I drift on,

the dark swell

somewhere beneath,

with dust of blackened suns

falling all around.

In secret

I will whisper

into the shell of my hand

the everhope

that you

will not,

never not

hear me.

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Emerging snowblind

Emerging

snowblind

in the violent winter.

Setting out

cleaving to the rumour

of the slowly

climbing

eye of the day.

Fullzoned

in whiteness.

Was it a voice,

calling to you, calling to me?

The wind

whipped away the words

as soon as our mouths had made them.

Long downgoing

into wild silence:

we drop the spears of night

into the drifts,

hoping to forget

we ever held them,

hoping one day

to return this way,

to chance another time

upon them.

Smears,

beastmade,

on the sometime sky.

Circles

spun wide

in the unperimetered.

To see through

the icelantern.

To watch

for infractions

in the nothingness.

Like the wolves

who weave our horizon

we go where the firelight fades.

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O starflake

O starflake,

everdiffering:

your millionyear odyssey

has come

to an end.

Carried here

on solar winds

through the unencompassable,

on the brightest of nights

you have fallen

into me: into me

and far,

so very very far

from forever.

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