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Jane Duran

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Three poems from a new sequence, Graceline

Chimeras

What if the ship were put together 
            with safety pins, newspaper,
cotton, paste and sawdust?

Or what if there was nothing to it? 
            What if the deck never happened,
the ochres and reds I remember

giving the lie, and at night 
            no beguiling surfaces, railings, rain?

And what if that port, the one that was 
            or might have been –

the open promenade, laughter, 
            palm trees, crates of coffee, papayas,
the sky almost a royal blue,

were just my love telling tales, 
            being there, colouring in
all the lavish and lost places?

Photograph of safety pins on a printed page

Jane Duran’s collection, Breathe Now, Breathe (Enitharmon 1995) received the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Enitharmon published Silences from the Spanish Civil War in 2002, and Coastal, a PBS Recommendation, in 2005.

Coastal is reviewed on page 71.

Page(s) 32

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