East of here
lies the sharp place,
where the cold wind coils its wit,
where the cords of the river run.
East risks a finger to the cheek,
lucid as ice. New studies beckon:
a pearl cabinet of little drawers.
To the east special things remove, folded
into the unfound space of the shell,
touches of piano rush high in the register,
ting of chandeliers swaying in the wind.
No train reaches: not the two-carriage 6am
which reverses at Ely and stumbles
backwards through Norfolk, though
colour flakes to smoke and shale, collects
in the black of a standing tree. Crows
flap once round a field in wet flannel air
as we slide through Sheppea Hill, Brandon,
Eccles Road, Wymondham, small halts
slapped out of mud. Cattle mope on dykes
in unreachable marsh: telegraph poles keel.
Track, hoardings, shed, chemical silos,
Lignacite, ash tree, smashed. Stringy pines,
silos, foreign barns, suspicious caravans.
It never goes far enough: deposits me flat
at Attleborough and Spooner Row.
Even if I strike out to the Viking shore
the pieces fly apart. East holds its place,
a flinch of light in the corner of the eye.
There was a morning, a moment
when it gave a spill of clear sight.
Now it nudges. Always to the left
on the North-South of the spine
brightness harbours, spurned, restless.
where the cold wind coils its wit,
where the cords of the river run.
East risks a finger to the cheek,
lucid as ice. New studies beckon:
a pearl cabinet of little drawers.
To the east special things remove, folded
into the unfound space of the shell,
touches of piano rush high in the register,
ting of chandeliers swaying in the wind.
No train reaches: not the two-carriage 6am
which reverses at Ely and stumbles
backwards through Norfolk, though
colour flakes to smoke and shale, collects
in the black of a standing tree. Crows
flap once round a field in wet flannel air
as we slide through Sheppea Hill, Brandon,
Eccles Road, Wymondham, small halts
slapped out of mud. Cattle mope on dykes
in unreachable marsh: telegraph poles keel.
Track, hoardings, shed, chemical silos,
Lignacite, ash tree, smashed. Stringy pines,
silos, foreign barns, suspicious caravans.
It never goes far enough: deposits me flat
at Attleborough and Spooner Row.
Even if I strike out to the Viking shore
the pieces fly apart. East holds its place,
a flinch of light in the corner of the eye.
There was a morning, a moment
when it gave a spill of clear sight.
Now it nudges. Always to the left
on the North-South of the spine
brightness harbours, spurned, restless.
Pamela Coren lives on Stamford and has published in various magazines. In 2001 she won second prize in the Kent & Sussex Competition and had commendations in the Leicester and the National Poetry Competitions.
Page(s) 6
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The