Margarethe
from Mata Hari And The Music Box
Sombre six o'clock mist
like stillness after battle.
The paisley green Seine,
engorged and listless,
curls through gaslit Paris streets.
As I begin to cross the Pont Neuf
it seems to detach and, disembodied,
become a capsized hull,
my familiar way home
made alien, unrelated.
On the apex, an indistinct plum-caped figure
leans to watch the mesmeric swirl.
Closer I see miniature pearls of trapped mist
baubled on her rich plum wool.
Turning a hooded face from the river
she hooks me with Dravidian eyes,
and says, as if we were in conversation,
- I was thinking of dropping it in.
She lifts her elbows from the balustrade,
rich pale fingers woven into the cord
of a velvet pouch, dangling.
- Perhaps you will take it back...
She proffers a doubtful smile, strained.
- My name is Margarethe.
She speaks in parenthesis, as though words seeped
from the edge of her mind round an occluding block.
Bewildered, I pause. The mist is breathing.
I find the pouch in my hands and she says
- you trapped me in a box.
Page(s) 39
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