Henry Shukman
Odyssey
The almost-four-year-old’s gleaming body
seems to sink into the ground
beyond the path’s brow as he walks off:
a rehearsal. One day it will be years not minutes
before he reappears clutching a toy.
What odyssey is he practising for,
that we, without thinking, made him for?
How can it be his shining limbs
already seem to know where it will end?
seems to sink into the ground
beyond the path’s brow as he walks off:
a rehearsal. One day it will be years not minutes
before he reappears clutching a toy.
What odyssey is he practising for,
that we, without thinking, made him for?
How can it be his shining limbs
already seem to know where it will end?
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
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