PICKINGS

Poetry from NHI publications

SHELLEY
Low-slung August sun shadows stonework into the deeper shadow lands — phantoms adrift on the wide Sargasso sea — and so unruffled, these lawns, and all this frumpery. So much then has time and its opposite done for me. It was along these lines that we walked, it was beneath these swaying poplars we kissed; and now memory passes strange lines of time over me. Ail, all I can think of in your marbled hand so small and cold in mine, so much space, so little time — and, as I board the National Express coach to Manchester and see the poplar trees sway and shift the shadows of that day away, I hear your voice whispering to me of the strangeness that awaits me in the darkness of the wide Sargasso sea.
JOHN MARKS

SHELLEY

Low-slung August sun shadows stonework into the
deeper shadow lands —
phantoms adrift on the wide Sargasso sea —
and so unruffled, these lawns,
and all this frumpery.

So much then has time
and its opposite
done for me.

It was along these lines that we walked, it was
beneath these swaying poplars we kissed;
and now memory passes strange lines of time over me.

Ail, all I can think of
in your marbled hand so small and cold in mine,
so much space, so little time —

and, as I board the National Express coach to Manchester
and see the poplar trees sway
and shift the shadows of that day away,
I hear your voice
whispering to me
of the strangeness that awaits me
in the darkness of the wide Sargasso sea.

JOHN MARKS

from
Lifting the Veil
ISBN 0 903610 20 5

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