Len Webster's 'On Reading Lorca In Thailand' Poem by Len Webster

We go on writing, beating ourselves up,
Shredding experience into words, fragments
To be re-shaped for a future self to read,
Or (ideally) some real other to replace the imaginary.

Like seeds set free from plant-heads,
Words drift in the air, less permanent
Than real seeds that at least have a chance
To perpetuate their own kind.

Powerless without people united in common language and sensibility,
Words become nature's drifters,
To be transformed through the intervention of others
Or dispersed onto rocks that will not welcome them.

Our myth is to be discovered, to survive, a remnant of an age,
An epoch, a race, a family, a simple self.
Symbolised by a name that is as much an invention
As our very identity, art and narrative carry us through,
Clinging to the low-lying islands
In the face of dreaded certainties.