Peter Scupham
Collector's Piece
What lack is here
That an old man’s cool passion may assuage,
Huddled nightly with the lost Empires? Follis
and solidus
Glimmer, recessed in their stained cabinets,
All centuries, all achievements,
Tokened by brutal heads embalmed with laurel.
Reversed, these acolytes of Roma Dea
Bear lucky legends and dispense cold favours.
On permanent bank holiday, dead money
Weighs heavy on his hands.
A Tyrian tetradrachm stirs in the light,
The eagle deeply struck in rough, clipped silver.
Scholars suggest this coin bought a god.
Now for the albums, cool herbaria
For withered Pax Britannica.
And though that long affair is over now,
Buried beneath the countless funeral postmarks,
Victoria and her children still keep watch
On Residency, plantation and canoe,
Mounted behind transparent, rustling guards.
Arrange the expensive pages how he will,
The higher values constantly elude him.
Here, in the study, a hooded lamp defines
The area of control. Seaby and Gibbons
Marshal the Captains and the Kings to order.
Ortheris and Pertinax link hands: from Kipling’s pages
Step out to keep Barbarians at bay
Where wall, cantonment crumble in old sunlight.
Imperium reduces to one man
Who combs and scavenges with text and tweezers,
Extending, with an Emperor’s cautious greed,
Fictive dominion in his world of shades.
Page(s) 10
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