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

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Patrick Williamson

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Flashback

We stand around the boiling heat,
like striplight flies attracted by the noise
of whispering through coupled hands,
and giants straddle the domed, smoking roof,
with their lagged lead pipes. We are bewitched

lovers exploring under the acacia trees of the heart,
in the Mistral, her mother’s breath,
naked in the rocky river of goose pimples.

And at my cousin’s close to Joyeux,
a feast, and in the moon-filled room, candlelit
crushed terra walls, companions
listening to Kodaly’s voice -listen
to the uplift of cicadas in darkness.

Pale pear green, meta, chiavate,
Hale, dusty, lean, a cose fatte

Full of skinseams of flitting wonder
or moulds of others’ withering trees,
your newly dug well brimming
drew in swirling patterns that merge:
before the sluice gate intervened,
an inlaid edge of life, lip and eye triggered
but not endeavour, flitting among your eaves.

 

Page(s) 38

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