Collected Poems
Rowan Williams
Carcanet, £15.99, 249 pages
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The poetry of Rowan Williams is full of moments when the known world becomes translucent and lets in an unfamiliar light. Sometimes, this happens when watching someone – a child, perhaps – fall asleep.
…sleepy yourself, impatient and resigned
at once,
and out of nowhere come the pictures.
Sitting
beside a well, waiting for the dark gulp
of a dropped penny.
In their simplicity, these lines, from ‘Bedtime: For RMW after twenty years’, tune the reader into a state of stillness. That “dark gulp” – is it heard as an echoed splash, or felt as a constriction in the throat?
