Falling Awake Quotes

“A Short Story of Falling

It is the story of the falling rain
to turn into a leaf and fall again

it is the secret of a summer shower
to steal the light and hide it in a flower

and every flower a tiny tributary
that from the ground flows green and momentary

is one of water's wishes and this tale
hangs in a seed-head smaller than my thumbnail

if only I a passerby could pass
as clear as water through a plume of grass

to find the sunlight hidden at the tip
turning to seed a kind of lifting rain drip

then I might know like water how to balance
the weight of hope against the light of patience

water which is so raw so earthy-strong
and lurks in cast-iron tanks and leaks along

drawn under gravity towards my tongue
to cool and fill the pipe-work of this song

which is the story of the falling rain
that rises to the light and falls again”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“the makeshift character that
springs from speaking and looking
on and letting everything pass and
then the loneliness of being left here
endless lost to my lethargy like a
dripping tap”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“still in her white night
clothes in the same long entangle-
ment”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“YOU MUST NEVER SLEEP UNDER A MAGNOLIA

when the tree begins to flower
like a glimpse of

Flesh

when the flower begins to smell
as if its roots have reached

the layer of
Thirst upon the
unsealed jar of

Joy

Alice, you should
never sleep under
so much pure pale

so many shriek-mouthed blooms

as if Patience
had run out of

Patience”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“little whispering fidgeting of a shut-away congregation
wondering who to pray to”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“little distant sounds of shut-away singing”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“no more than a flash of free-will
until the clouds close their options and the whole

melancholy air
surrenders to pure fear and
falls”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“remembering better times whereas naming no names
some of us would rather not remember something
some of us have got enough bloody nightmares already”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“or if I stand
if I move one hand
I hear the hiss of flowers closing their eyelids”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“A RUSHED ACCOUNT OF THE DEW

I who can blink
to break the spell of daylight

and what a sliding screen between worlds
is a blink

I who can hear the last three seconds in my head
but the present is beyond me
listen

in this tiny moment of reflexion
I want to work out what it's like to descend
out of the dawn's mind

and find a leaf and fasten the known to the unknown
with a liquid cufflink
and then unfasten

to be brief

to be almost actual

oh pristine example
of claiming a place on the earth
only to cancel”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“almost everything here has cold hands”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“And so he goes on dwindling away
maybe through too much prayer
is now too rarefied to touch
or settle anywhere”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“and the whole apparition only
ever known backwards already too
late now almost gone”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“what a block of hope what a
kleptomaniac what a thief of life

I am”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“which is a memory

which happens again and again”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“which is love's property”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“a kiss gives off a swoosh of
amnesia”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“as soon as the grief as soon as a
ghost begins to shake me from the
inside”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“with the same old grief as
mine is it mine am I home oh how
much life not my own have I
buttered and eaten”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“the same dizziness the same life
like a metal beam whacks me on the
head again as when a man slinks
home after battle
alive alive and nobody else was
that lucky
who is it trapped in this living
shape pushing the door with his
hands still covered in blood”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“and what precisely is this shining”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“nothing yet has a shadow every-
thing is here but pale”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“and hearing the lurch the
well-known slap of joy”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“it makes me shiver like a dead
soldier returning his empty clothes
to his bride but she's married
someone else”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“rewinding and grieving

rewinding and grieving”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“and magpies coming straight
from a meeting with misfortune”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“and the hour is quickened by
crows”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“but it is glittering now in the
gaps between things”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“severed
by light from myself not knowing
but almost”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

“she never quite completes her
sentence but is always almost”
― Alice Oswald, Falling Awake