Saturday, 2 May 2020

Other Harbours by Anna Lewis



One of the poems…

Blue

The fields had stood bald for months:
the earth tight with ice, the tubers
and kernels stashed below locked

fast inside their rinds. Then the hair
had started to fail on the children,
their nails to turn blue as forst

that spotted the leaves, and the cow
would no longer yield but had stalled
in the dust, refused to rise.

So the parents had nailed shut
the door and carried the children,
light as shaken-out sacks, to the town.

From the almshouse walls they watched
clouds stiffen over the sea, thought of
the boarded door, the sealed ground.

They had left too late for their daughter:
wrapped in white, she was blessed in
the chapel as her brother looked up,

up into the dome, tipped the back
of his head to his shoulders, filled
his eyes with the ceiling’s empty bowl.

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