John Mole
Continuum
The readers over my shoulder
are becoming the dead,
a vanishing perspective.
Gone from this life
too many in less than a year,
and the time to count them
less than it was. With a gesture
precious and unique
they wave in parting:
You’re on your own now
but must speak for us
as our loss has taught you.
No hesitation then
or only an instant
to appraise her beauty
before answering
this first-year student
on video-link –
I have a question –
Which do you fear more,
your own death
or the death of loved ones?
for what can I say
but that the one must be the other
either way, that fear
is only for what vanishes
without its due of plenitude
and celebration. Poems
are the living counterweight
to absence, gestures
as precious and unique
as those my loved ones
have already made through me
in parting, finding words
for this, the moment
when almost at a loss for them
they gaze at her beauty
with my eyes and answer it
as I do, hoping we speak the truth.
Page(s) 60-61
magazine list
- Features
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- 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