Carole Coates
Clearing The House
Every time it was Euston and evening and dark
and later the cold and the sour of the house
with not enough light and too harsh a light.
There was so much of it all and all of it hard,
all of it crippling and merciless. We inched our way through –
a drawer, then a bookcase and later, and better, a room.
This was a world gone to papers and details and dust,
a desert to ransack after the sea’s long withdrawal.
This was the forest of leaves when the forest is gone.
We measured the time by the garden’s unwatched regulation:
yellow jasmine scarcely able to cope, some frail daffodils paper-white,
an unnecessary and overwhelming profusion of camellias.
When it was done and the house was scoured, scraped, expunged,
we walked in the garden that last time and found just one peony.
We said but there was always, only, ever, just one red peony.
Page(s) 29
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