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Andrew Jordan

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Palimpsest

"...on our field trip we found giant letters concealed in the landscape. Huge forms edged by footpath and motorway, the ditched and banked council estate. A text of place, a  knowledge  in the field edged with pylons."  Dr Charles Mintern


1
She wore the mantle of
the real world: Utopia, masked
and wrapped up in wounds,
a myth of repression.

'..walking along her edged field,
pulling serifed trees
from out of the view
easily for her,

and she'd do the distances
as if they were real.'
There's no way to recall
what can't affect you.

2
Was she blessed
or merely brain damaged? How she
read the holy script
of the edged embankment,

recovering
whole sequences of words
from scenery.
`It's hysteria,' she said,

'before it was seen.'
(And all based on
an image of
herself as her daughter.)

3
She stood beside
the letter N
at the base of
the airless motte,

then walked to
the strange font
of a massive A
stretched out below:

`It's all a part
of nature', she said,
laughing at
the way the land

could still describe
the after glow
of the time God spoke
the word she'd read.

 

Page(s) 39-40

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