Miniatures of Loss
Memory, turn the key,
letting the haunting past
return: his father’s face
an alabaster mask
framed in its coffin lace
and he a five-year child
bewildered, unaware,
numb in the grasp of death.
Long thirties’ summers, tents
and makeshift cricket games
in tangled meadows near
the house; stickleback days,
the pond in Farmer Lowe’s
field, all newts and minnows;
cotton-wool clouds puffing
forever across the sky.
Cigarette cards, a vase,
some faded photographs;
such miniatures of loss,
drawn from the bric-a-brac
of time, litter the mind,
drift in a phantom world,
a vanished, unreal country
where only ghosts return.
Page(s) 8
magazine list
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
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- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
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- 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