Mandy Pannett
Who grew the pumpkins, Shelley?
The photocopier scours your eyes if you swing the cover up
fast before it’s had chance to finish.........
.........and Shelley, smitten by light in his balcony tower,
shot through with the blue of a Tuscan sky,
an Italian hot house - always called it ascending -
An angel of God? - that wild, young atheist
lost in his verse of the Cenci slaughter, of incestuous
love -
.........but scandal was like chianti to him,
like grappa the shocking of mobs -
....move over this orange soft farmland now, this
mellow peach bay, Livorno
drenched by a summer storm
lifting the waves like sails -
.....downstairs was the hell
he wanted forgotten - dead babies,
the suicides, Willmouse -
Willmouse in his small coffin in Rome -
and Mary,
lost in her darkness....
.... now shift a few months to Ravenna -
Byron and Shelley, pine forest there, shooting
at pumpkins, while falcon and goose,
peacock and monkey, all of the mad menagerie
looted and prowled through the villa
like souls. Who
grew the pumpkins, Shelley, swept up the mess?
After the light, was it
SLAM the lid down
Was it
storms above Spezia?
Page(s) 118
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