Manor House Gardens
Beyond all this nothing else exists, beyond
apples rotting on the empty tennis courts
and vacant benches occupied by air.
The borders drift between late flowering
and wilting – where niches, arbours, paths
pause, indolent in the late September heat.
Contrived vistas stare grandly at infinity
but are blind. On the formal pond a boat
rests with oars crossed like folded arms.
Statues listen carefully but instantly forget
while history, vast as the great yew hedge
is charmed, enchanted, but going nowhere.
A bankrupt season with nothing to be gained.
Leaves pile up inside the little summer house,
talk of war is interspersed with tittle tattle.
Between the slightest sounds, of ornamental
water falling over stones, a droning aeroplane,
falls silence upon silence, unexplained.
Page(s) 20
magazine list
- Features
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- 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