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Claudia Jessop

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Hope

Second Light Poetry Competition 2008 SHORTLISTED

Claudia Jessop reading Hope 1687.1 KB
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I smoke, and turn, and cry
and turn back again.

Old darkness. I won’t answer any phone calls.
I won’t get up in the morning. This is bad.

When hope comes, you expect it to be
grand and gold and kingly, maybe
riding in on a radiant horse, maybe
blaring white against an urgent violet sky,
like an alabaster statue of a god.

Instead, it is you
slightly drunk, laughing
sitting on the end of my bed;
it is a spring rain starting, tea:

it is the creak of a staircase
under your foot,
it is the door as you open it,

purple sea-coast flowers dry as brushes
crackling in the paper wrapped around them,
their colours folded in your arms,
your heart.

 

Competition judged by Gillian Clarke

Page(s) 30

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