The Knowledge

By Robert Peake

Robert Peake's incredible eye for detail illuminates a collection of stirring and delicately attuned poems that not only roam but actively seek – travelling far and wide to all manner of places but also moving through time, taking leaps of faith or journeys into memory and sensation.
From postcards to portraits, from ancient and modern wars to cosmopolitan cities, wildlife, and even a tiny ornamental skeleton, Robert Peake finds a sharp focus for the bigger picture both far and wide and closer to home. These carefully-controlled and eloquent poems know the subtle and deep consequences from each small gesture; the ripple-effect across each story, the altering of lives and history; the still, quiet centre from which it all begins.
Robert Peake is a British-American poet living near London. His newest short collection is The Silence Teacher (Poetry Salzburg, 2013). His previous short collection was Human Shade (Lost Horse Press, 2011).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Release date: Aug 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781911027010

Book preview

Contents

The Argument

White Pigeons

Still Life with Bougainvillea

Amuse-Bouche

The Argument

Robin

Grass-Talkers

The Flies

Badger

Ursula

The Hills

I Was Born to Small Fish.

Adelphophagy

Nocturne with Writer’s Block

British Matches

Matins With Slippers And House Cat

Have A Nice Day!

April

Sometimes I Wonder What I Do

Postcards from the War Hospital

Last Gasp

Postcards from the War Hospital, Autumn

Despot’s Progress

Unidentified Photo on the Internet

Mr Ergosum Speaks

Problem

Blessing the Bankers

The Rouchomovsky Skeleton

Soldier at the Tomb of Alexander

Historic Spring

America, Its Elements

I. Fire

II. Water

III. Air

IV. Earth

The Age of the Incredible

First Citizen of Bruges

Martyrs’ Cross

A Robot’s Understanding of Friendship

Postcards from the War Hospital, Winter

Making Love to the Sound of Gunfire

The Smoke

La Campagna, London, Friday Night

Smoke Ring

Home Office, Croydon

Clapham Junction

Soho

Brick Lane Market

Canary Wharf

Blackheath

Two Women in Heels Walk Briskly Toward the Train Platform

Calling all Stations Blues

Seraphim

Million-Dollar Rain

Tap Water

Geopositioning

Jellied Eels

The Knowledge

Small Gestures

Meteorology

Acknowledgements

The penalty for education is self-consciousness. But it is too late for ignorance.

– Marvin Bell, ‘32 Statements About Poetry’

The Argument

White Pigeons

are not doves. They do not stand

for peace, but flock and swoop

above my head in the blue before dawn.

They are a liquid in the air,

elastic, bunching and swarming

like oil drops on water.

I do not want to know the physics.

I do not want to make a documentary.

I stand and watch them ripple like a flag.

The soldier inside me wants to salute.

The prophet takes it for a sign.

They double-back, like a bed sheet, folded.

And then they dip below the tree line,

leaving their absence to hang in the air.

I never wished they were more than they were.

A mourning dove now sounds his call to prayer.

A red-tailed hawk lords over mousing fields.

I have heard some call all pigeons wingèd rats.

But these were different, bred to home,

which means that they were practising,

and work never seemed as elegant as this.

Tie a message to my foot. I will assume

my place in the aerial formation. Let me

be a single snowflake in that flurry.

Still Life with Bougainvillea

The bougainvillea taps

at the window, and you

are gone. The cat watches

over the path where you

might return. I watch

the cat, and the small

flowers inside the flowers,

as they brush the pane.

On the cat, there are fleas.

In the flowers, flowers.

In me, your absence