Alison Brackenbury
Five poems
From the Irish
Sit high in the saddle. Stay on your horse!
Do not set a foot
By bog, or gorse.
Then you may come to your bright land again
Where love never tires,
Joints never pain.
But the golden girth breaks. How far you fall
Through your youth’s blue air
To ground’s green wall.
Every bruise aches. As the small men part,
For the first time in centuries,
You hear your heart.
Alison Brackenbury was born in Lincolnshire in 1953. She now lives in Gloucestershire, where she has worked for almost twenty years in the family metal finishing business. Her latest collection is Singing in the Dark (Carcanet, 2008). New poems can be read at her website: www.alisonbrackenbury.co.uk. Her collections include Dreams of Power (1981), Breaking Ground (1984), Christmas Roses (1988), Selected Poems (1991), 1829 (1995), After Beethoven (2000) and Bricks and Ballads (2004). Her poems have been included on BBC Radio 3 and 4. Her work recently won a Cholmondeley Award.
Page(s) 63
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