A Poem by John Stammers

The Real Names of Things

The real names of things are hidden from us.
The dragonfly is green daylight through a rippled pane
or filaments of green gold from a lamé dress
whilst its inner self remains inviolate and shut.

Too much is known as exterior impressions,
too much for the blue jay’s feather to overbear
upon our partial comprehensions
so shatters to nameless blue fragments.

I fear that, in my narrow concern,
I have encountered merely the exemplar
of things in the world,
like an eclipse viewed though the slit in a card.

The flower is more violet in frost.
This affects my sensibility
with something like a shock—
surfaces have their depths.

So I carry a form of anguish to know
such exquisite imminent matter,
the anonymous modalities,
the name the tiger calls the tiger.

John Stammers’ first collection, Panoramic Lounge-bar, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His collection Stolen Love Behaviour was Poetry Book Society Choice. He edited the Picador Book of Love Poems. His new collection, Queries on Death, the Infinite and Irrational Numbers, is out in November.