SOUTH 41
Selectors' poems
The poems for SOUTH are selected anonymously by guest selectors.
Thank you to Chris Davis and Frances Wilson who were the selectors for SOUTH 41.
Abroad
Even by the outskirts of Calais it’s like being let loose
in a sweet shop - all those old favourites I’d forgotten
the taste of: Rappel! Prix des carburants. I roll them round
on my tongue, gob-stoppers of sounds I can’t get enough of:
Virages sur dix kilometres. Aire du champs du drap d’or.
They melt on my breath into more than recognition.
This is reclamation, primitive as pronouns, possessives.
But I keep it to myself, mouth them out of the window
under the Butterworth adagio you’re tuned to, remembering
your mother’s endless reciting of every road sign:
Give way. Reduce speed now. She’d haul in each word
like a life-line. With amazement which was not quite delight
(her hold wasn’t sure enough) she’d arrive at comprehension.
It drove us all mad. But she wasn’t. She was abroad,
trying to recover through the flavour of words the meaning
of a country she dimly remembered she’d once belonged in.
©Frances Wilson
The Treasure House
In the last Gothic building in England, the librarian
climbs wide stairs, squeezes through archways
narrowly, layer upon layer; unfolds linenfold
panelling; switches lights under forests of vaulting.
In this arabesque of philanthropic wealth, she sits
carefully down at a leather-topped table; wears white
cotton gloves to open books with surgical care;
places them on reverent wedges of foam. Points to:
Nativities, Descents from the Cross; Christ freed
from the tomb, his pink folded shroud as pretty
as Turkish Delight; his Ascension, witnessed by heads,
round as footballs, grinning upwards from graves.
There are rooms full of bindings, ivory, silver, leather
studded with gems, precious enough for a princess.
Most rare of all, a Fragment, in the hand of St. John.
We may not see it, only its box. She takes it all in her stride.
Takes us down in the lift; locks room behind room; sits
at her desk, growing her babies. Tucked face to face,
afloat in her womb, they are shielded from view,
as she waits for the passing of time in her own Book of Hours.
©Chris Davis