Henry Shukman
Thaw
The sun has thrashed this home to tears.
Every eave flows, the icicles weep.
The yard has moulted, the neighbourhood’s
come out in mud. The water runs and runs,
a waterfall beating down our roof.
When the sun breaks in the room shivers.
We walk about the house blinking.
In the meadow-gleam of a mirror we see strangers.
Clouds below us, the sun our peer.
This high new home: we have no name for it.
Every eave flows, the icicles weep.
The yard has moulted, the neighbourhood’s
come out in mud. The water runs and runs,
a waterfall beating down our roof.
When the sun breaks in the room shivers.
We walk about the house blinking.
In the meadow-gleam of a mirror we see strangers.
Clouds below us, the sun our peer.
This high new home: we have no name for it.
Henry Shukman’s collection In Dr No’s Garden was a Book of the Year in The Times and The Guardian, and won the Aldeburgh Poetry Prize in 2003. He has worked as a travelwriter and a trombonist, and recently won the Author’s Club First Novel Award with Sandstorm (Cape, 2005).
Page(s) 37
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