Patricia Adelman
Tabula Rasa
It can no more be rationalised, the need
for carols to be sung to the older tunes,
the full fruit bowl, lights on a tree,
than for the cat to be pressing its paws on the rug
in memory of a lost breastful of milk.
What is it we are trying to reach
with these, our yearly incantations?
Could it be that our long-ago dead
may visit us only by shadowlight
of candles through baubles on branches of fir?
It is to endorse our place on this earth
that we renew our pact with the living;
by that brief seasonal exchange
of those folded pieces of coloured card
massed together over the hearth.
Habit persists. Its indelible lines
etched on childhood’s tablets
go undisclosed till this annual flood of
bright inks reveals the pattern
of deepest needs, most desperate of wishes.
Page(s) 60
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