Matt Simpson
We Meet at Last
This is what
you look like then?
An obvious
charmer still,
hand on shoulder
fingering curls.
We meet at Warrandyte,
the good professor's house
where distant bell birds ping,
and magpies chortle in
the pepper trees.
I mean I get to see
a frontispiece. The carte
de visite photographer
has gone for that soft-focus
Pre-Raphaelite look
the men all like:
that studied ambivalence,
noli me tangere/but
console me in my hour of need.
I know - for I have miles
of retrospect -
that your if-only eyes
are artist's eyes,
the company you yearn for
is angels different from
the ones aloft: you want
luminaries of the brush and pen.
And there are fraught times ahead
counting the lost, the dead,
the Swan River flood,
terror-stricken horses straining necks,
and only just
above the battering water line.
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