Gemma Bristow: Nightingale

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NIGHTINGALE
i In the bird's spare body she rediscovered her voice; it had changed, it spoke, with liquid fluency, a universal language. At once, the grief inside her throat streamed into its releases. ii From the dark wood, seeping and poignant, the song ensues; one chapter of an elegy that will never be completed. The trees are fastened to the earth by irretrievable roots; the nightingale hangs from the lip of a world above pain by the scarf of her song. iii When the nightingale's song spoke out in Paradise, it was a sign that even then unbridled joy could not possess all things. In the night of the seventh day it moved through the stillness of completion like a part forgotten. Its pain was born with it and the bright fruits, the patterned sky could not heal it and were never meant to.
GEMMA BRISTOW

NIGHTINGALE

i

In the bird's spare body
she rediscovered her voice;
it had changed, it spoke,
with liquid fluency, a universal language.
At once, the grief inside her throat
streamed into its releases.

ii

From the dark wood,
seeping and poignant,
the song ensues;
one chapter of an elegy
that will never be completed.
The trees
are fastened to the earth
by irretrievable roots;
the nightingale
hangs from the lip
of a world above pain
by the scarf of her song.

iii

When the nightingale's song
spoke out in Paradise,
it was a sign that even then
unbridled joy
could not possess all things.
In the night of the seventh day
it moved through the stillness of completion
like a part forgotten.
Its pain was born with it
and the bright fruits, the patterned sky
could not heal it
and were never meant to.

GEMMA BRISTOW

Gemma Bristow was born in Birmingham, UK, 1976. She is currently a graduate student in literary history at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Her poems have been published in several magazines. She has a website at http://www.helical-library.net/

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