Again in the Black Cloud / J.H. Prynne

I finally feel inspired to post a poem from one of my favourite poets of all time, Jeremy Prynne. I've written about my fascination with his work over the years and I'm aware that many people do not share my fondness for his dense often dizzying verse. But this is the last poem in his 1974 sequence, "Wound Response". Apart from highlighting his alchemising of scientific language, there's not much I can say to elucidate it but I hope that you enjoy its strange, enchanting music.

Shouts rise again from the water

surface and flecks of clouds skim over

to storm-light, going up in the stem.

Falling loose with a grateful hold

of the sounds towards purple, the white bees

swarm out from the open voice gap. Such "treasure":

the cells of the child line run back

through hope to the cause of it; the hour

is crazed by fracture. Who can see what he loves,

again or before, as the injury shears

past the curve of recall, the field

double-valued at the divine point.

Air to blood

are the two signs flushed with the sound:

(a) "tended to refrain from aimless wandering"

(b) "experienced less dizziness"

(c) "learned to smile a little"

(d) " said they felt better and some indeed

seemed happier" - out in the

snow-fields the aimless beasts

mean what they do, so completely the shout

is dichronic in gratitude,

half-silvered, the

gain control set for "rescue" at

negative echo line. The clouds now "no longer

giving light but full of it," the entry condition a daze

tending to mark zero. Shouting and

laughing and intense felicity given over, rises

under the hill as tinnitus aurium, hears the

child her blue

coat! his new

shoes and boat!

Round and round there is descent through

the leader stroke, flashes of light over slopes, fear

grips the optic muscle. Damages makes perfect:

"reduced cerebral blood flow and oxygen utilisation

are manifested by an increase in slow frequency waves,

a decrease in alpha-wave activity, an increase in

beta waves, the appearance of paroxysmal potentials."

And constantly the

child line dips into sleep, the

more than countably infinite hierarchy of

higher degree causality conditions

setting the reverse signs of memory and dream.

"Totally confused most of the time" : - is

the spending of gain

or damage mended

and ended, aged , the

shouts in the rain: in

to the way out

Run at 45° to the light cones, this cross-

matching of impaired attention

feels wet streaking down the tree bark,

a pure joy at a feeble joke.