Alice Oswald - Apr 5, Iyengar II & I

More of Oswald’s flowers, who are so fierce and beautiful. As they should be.

Narcissus

once I was half flower, half self,

that invisible self whose absence inhabits mirrors,

that invisible flower that is always inwardly

groping up through us, a kind of outswelling weakness,

yes once I was half frail, half glittering,

continually emerging from the store of the self itself,

always staring at rivers, always

nodding and leaning to one side, I came gloating up,

and for a while I was half skin half breath,

for a while I was neither one thing nor another,

a waterflame, a variable man-woman of the verges,

wearing the last self-image I was left with

before my strength went down down into darkness

for the best of a year and lies here crumpled

in a clot of sleep at the root of all nothings