Poem Of The Week: 'The Touch' By Roger Garfitt

Roger Garfitt’s poem of natural renewal is a flicker of light in shadow, a hint at re-birth in the wake of an iron winter. And if it is a cliché too convenient to find a parallel in the ‘thawing’ of a protracted lockdown, it may be because the poem offers the kind of annual certainty which the present crisis cannot.

The sun, or more especially, the sharp angle of light trained through a tree trunk fork, is a chance serendipity, a flexing of illumination and warmth which might almost have been arranged by architects of metaphysical conjunction, like the shaft of light through a pyramid or Dolmen. Garfitt’s astute use of metaphor, and brevity of lineation, breathe life and continuity into lines which demand little more than the reader’s undivided attention for a few moments.

For see the vibrancy of the colours and feel the infusion of sugars which ‘cajole’ the flowers into sensual, revelatory refulgence. The poet’s reference to Sheela-na-Gig suggests a fecundity that is no longer hidden. The seductive opening flower is a waiting vulva, a birth passage through which the glory of the light of the sun is returned.


‘The Touch’ is taken from The Action and is published by Carcanet.

More information here: https://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781784107710