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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Trevor Simpson

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Responses

Suspended on early morning breezes
Hot air balloons, confronting us with
Their light-bulb shapes risen behind
The raw estate-built houses,
Have arrived as silently as hung questions,
As sudden and huge as wise sayings.

We are disarmed, reduced to saying what they are;
Significant events miss us, pass
Slowly and before we know it - burners flare
Long before the puny blast.
We call them relics of beseiged Paris
While they shadow the hard garden’s

Drought-stained lawn. The sponsored pair
Whose shoe soles rule in creaking wicker
Above, point an eye glass, hear
Our shrunken gnat noise, spy the flicker
Of silver/olive our young willow makes;

They will drift downwind an hour or more
To quick crackle of hawthorn, land
From soundlessness on a turf shore.
We need to give some answer, an end
Of gliding moments. Compelled, uncertain,
We lift the mesmerised wave of children.

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