Poem of the week: In the Reading Room

You scan the stream, silver-eyed as a heron
search the surface for what might betray
a halt in the flow, pentameter’s delay,
a master’s faded words, his lexicon.

Before you, found in an old book
marking a page, a longhand manuscript.
Look, where the knib unloaded ink, dipped
and rose again, leaving a blot on the downstroke,

writing by candlelight in another century,
wind in the chimney, maybe, the pen’s small sound.
You write: ‘Anonymous. Date a mystery.
Some words illegible. No signature found.’

Yet the poem sings in your mind from the silent archive
and all the dead words speak, aloud, alive.

Gillian Clarke was appointed National Poet of Wales in 2008. Her collections include Zoology, Five Fields, and Letter from a Far Country (all Carcanet). Her prose journal Roots Home (Carcanet) was published last year