David Harsent....winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize this week....
"If I can't hear the music, I don't think it is a poem".
I mulled this over for a few days....my backround is words and music...it's how I feel.
I know a Man
I know a man who takes the basic earth wetted
Turns it in his hands with concentration
Yet as if in a dream enters a dreamlike state and
Pulls the clay and pushes it down then lifts it up to form a vessel.
His broad long fingered hands seem too big for the intricate
Flattened models that he places on the pot.
Shells and fish and rocking boats with stormy
Waves lashing the hulls that rise and dip around the form.
Then turns it on a turntable and views the work
Reviews with a critical eye.
Tweaking the soft shapes into submission.
And both man and clay submit to one another.
