Lance Lee
Chartres
Lioness, you crouch on your hill,
poised above Beauce’s rolling plains.
The Euer slips by at your feet; countless
bright eyes roll over its bridges
through long winter nights.
You crouch, not soar, though low
town roofs still come no higher
than your knees, and the odd
mispaired steeples dominate
as when gaudy nobles passed
and near slaves toiled in the fields.
How much faith, disease, mindful
violence, wealth and poverty
shaped your stony sinews?
Golden in late light or iron in grey,
chilled in the bone summer or winter,
indifferent crowds routinely pick
pelt and claw, unaware how
you wait for those hungry
with your hunger to enter,
to be eaten whole by faith,
to cease to be, to become another’s.
Chartres, 1995
Lance Lee has other poems forthcoming in Agenda and Scintilla. A Poetics for Screenwriters has just been published, and also a novel, Second Chances. Time’s up and Other Plays will be published later this year.
Page(s) 59
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