Edmund Prestwich
The Natal Museum
The Natal Museum - I came here after school,
once a week at least. In the galleries
behind that absurd "Flemish Renaissance" frieze,
I brooded on the secret lives of stones;
I saw the last wild elephant killed in Natal,
a giant Moa's impossible egg, the empty ocean
behind the dodo on its painted moss,
hardly a human soul - I came to this place
for loneliness and dreams among dead birds.
In the hall of mammals, and a toadlike dinosaur's bones,
the gemsbok, blesbok, klipspringers, Thompson's gazelles
crowded together alertly, lifting wide eyes,
as if they might whirl away suddenly, clattering hooves
on the stone-tiled floors and out, but they never did.
once a week at least. In the galleries
behind that absurd "Flemish Renaissance" frieze,
I brooded on the secret lives of stones;
I saw the last wild elephant killed in Natal,
a giant Moa's impossible egg, the empty ocean
behind the dodo on its painted moss,
hardly a human soul - I came to this place
for loneliness and dreams among dead birds.
In the hall of mammals, and a toadlike dinosaur's bones,
the gemsbok, blesbok, klipspringers, Thompson's gazelles
crowded together alertly, lifting wide eyes,
as if they might whirl away suddenly, clattering hooves
on the stone-tiled floors and out, but they never did.
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