William Palmer
Letters to the Sea
Nothing but night goes on above.
The town is boozy, languorous, in love
with half a million pictures of itself.
Not how it is, the mounting shelf
of houses up the hill, but images to adore -
a blade of blue, inch of shore...
Threading the planted cliffs, the Walks
dip dark between the lamps’ iron stalks.
Here, softly mimicking, pines replace
the seething waves, old men at midnight pace
out noon - every bush their soft caressing widow;
every tree a tall, addressing shadow...
‘I live on the edge.’ ‘The moon is full.’
‘I watch the sea all night.’
The sea pulls
out, its curved, sly knives teem, drown in light.
We sleep - until the tide, the postman calls.
The letter-box coughs, through it falls
soft breath of lovers tenderly
apart, or some far death, coldly
reported from another, still dark sea.
Page(s) 22
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