Oceans and the Ink
(on first reading Marianne North)
In here, amongst researchers and old men,
241.02: Victorian Explorers.
Shelves of books, vellumed, stapled, perfect bound.
‘The forest is inaccessible in rain.
This island full of garish colours’.
Next to me, a boy has fallen asleep
over a copy of Jane Eyre. A girl
is tracing a silver dolphin’s head.
‘I never believed that society was polite and
prefer to walk the mountains on my own’.
The cover smells of lavender, and newly fallen dust.
A storm lamp swings above my head.
‘The seas are too vast to name,
fascination keeps me travelling,
tonight there is a chiselled moon’.
I imagine a world without paper and how
guesses could never illustrate these
strange flowers with the copper green of trees.
Or tell me of the oceans and the ink
that brought back Paradise, to this room.
Outside it is summer,
touched now with salt and swallows,
the intricacies of azure and lost gardens.
The fan in the ceiling whirls above,
the footfalls of librarians
the formal weight of letters,
and this poem.
Page(s) 20
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