Poetry

Summary

Côte-à-côte in Katherine Mansfield's Heart

Cri de Coeur

She cries out from her grave

not ‘leave all fair’ but:

leave me alone!

Let me RIP through

your societies your conferences

your codswallop about me

& tear it all apart.

read me read me

for all you're worth

that's why I wrote

but STOP

carving me up

& serving me

at too many tables

stop the industry

stop the production

get off my back

stop flying on my wings

fly on your own

Cri d'un autre côté du Coeur

No, no, no, my dears all

je vous adore!

You keep me on my toes,

on tenterhooks,

my pen up to scratch:

without you

I'd be up here in these trees

flying, flying all over Fontainebleau

dropping down to my very own

Carrefour

& my forest rock

the folk of Avon made for me

then away,

like Ariel

but tethered always to my grave,

& that staircase at Le Prieuré.

Weep not

& know, visiting me

I'm freed again

let me be

please

let me

are eye pee

(on you all)

hear me!

talking of me,

you turn over every stone

& the damp, yellowed grass

lifts its thin, squashed limbs

& poppies grow.

Then I can fly further.

You know how I love the sun

how I dance in its light.

JAN KEMP

Three Sonnets from a Poetical Work Entitled ‘K’

Bliss

‘driving through Eternity in a timeless taxi’

the couple sit motionless

they are alone / transfixed / 2 people

in a room in a terrace block

packed against a park & a Novotel / 2 people

in a street

populated by hawkers tourists

down&outs reading DH Lawrence / a girl

who hides her Maori lover in a hitch-hiker's bag /

the couple

roped together

by intertwining their pulses

seize the moment / split the starlight's dominion

& all paradise breaks loose / like war horses

sparking steel hooves at the sky

IAIN BRITTON

Pounamu

‘the rainbow shell … sings in the profoundest ocean’

my birthdate is acknowledged /

husband & wife meet for servings

of Cornish weather / for an intimacy

squandered at a table / they love hate