David Barnett
Born again - and again
For Poppy
What does Lazarus hump
from that country he discovered?
What spells to prick fanatics
at their haunts? Can he
catch the Rhiannon-blackbirds
who blurt forgetfulness, the bliss
of it, its lease of ease?
Inside a hollow tump
at Arbeth, child’s cauled.
Reason drowses. Birth
hurts. Till she sucks
at the shuffling air.
Sheds all the lore
she wore. Such a look
as her papa jigs her
round his Celtic blessing.
Roads rise with her.
Rain soft on hills.
And a backing wind.
Poppy seed tucks
into the ground. Buddha’s
mantra. That a vision
under a bo-tree
will shake its lustre on those
trawled from an ocean’s
scaly guts. Shoals
of them to clot together
in a tub. Or
the dugout-hectares ploughshares
turn, crows poke.
Bottle-nosed dolphin bobs
across a sound. Plane
that’s a world’s axletree
is left to die from natural
causes. Bluebell wood.
What the sirens sing
over the straits of
the pilot whose crossing’s briefer
than a wasp-summer.
Whose tongue’s a minotaur’s. Grip
a kestrel’s. Coat a stoat’s.
Page(s) 159-160
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