Stand in the woodshadow sparred in the woodshadow
I hear the bees
on pillars of ivy. They reach up, the trees
are unstable, so tall so thin.
A pitch
gravitating to the pole.
Their banded bodies
affect the sun.
Diurnal platinum that gives them the stoles
the measure,
the bright abjectness.
They fuse a net. A flux
of magnetism
so that each tree the ivy has knit away
bears the flow from its height to earth.

A chantry of breeding flow.
A column that draws in the ear. Its asteroid.
But what is it saying.
A pure adverse to what the flat bone helmet of the soldier
says.
Listening is swimming.
The sound laps at unascertained edges.
A form of marble caught in wilderness.
Terrible positions of sound
that
hatch or flame, flammable emission.
Tonight they will be quiet.
There is also a box.
As vast as a radio
transmitter was once
in the war.

Sean Borodale's collection, Bee Journal (Cape), was shortlisted for the 2012 Costa Poetry Award and the TS Eliot Prize. His second volume of poems, Human Work, was published in 2015 following his selection as one of Next Generation Poets.