SIMON PARKER
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    • n.b. for Barney
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        If you follow the silk road
        For Jamal Khashoggi


        If you follow the silk road
​        don’t look down or back
        or, to your side
        keep your eyes straight ahead
        or better still, close your eyes
        and let the idea, the silk road
        enter through your feet
        do not stop to look at
        the woman outside
        that building into which
        her fiancé has entered
        disappearing between
        the potted saplings
        flanking the entrance
        beyond the steel maze of safety
        threaded with bold blue words
        Polis Polis Polis
        cartoon colouring
        to shade the minotaur
        she waits, patiently
        at first, before the excitement
        is drained and love
        and hope are dismembered
        a dream of future things
        hacked into little pieces
        the bone of marriage
        broken
        she waits outside there still
        unseen by the men
        passing her
        attentive only to their suitcases
        and the business of the world
        keeping the silk road smooth
        covering the stains
        with more flowing silk


















© Simon Parker

                                                                                                   
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  • Home
  • Blog
  • POETRY
    • Three Poems from Three Years
    • Eve
    • Via Dolorosa
    • a disappearing
    • Unfolding
    • Street Scene
    • Said and done
    • Ingres and Delacroix share a coffee
    • If you follow the silk road
    • In him we trust
    • n.b. for Barney
    • Who Can Erase The Traces?
  • Theatre
    • Aching Parts
    • Mooring
    • The Right Kind of Violence
    • Vex
    • Take me to where the arrows no longer fall
    • Yellow Fever
    • Own Goal
    • Just Like Flies
    • Snap
    • Home
  • Fictions
    • Gross
    • The 7.22
    • For Those Who Trespass
    • Karaoke
    • We Only Notice When It's Gone
    • This is a story that I am going to make a story out of
    • Les Anglais en Vacances
    • She
    • La Comedie Humaine
  • LIVEWORKS
    • Watching Coriolanus at the National Theatre
    • Watching Phaedra at the National Theatre
    • Notes from a wanderer
  • News
  • Contact