SIMON PARKER
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unfolding
a cento

At the empty windows set in the tall house
where fear leaps up inside me
​bathed in such unkindly light

my body’ a sack of bones, broken within

unfaithfulness no longer hurts
in the lull before monsoon or typhoon
but like bright light through the bare tree
is a portmanteau of scream & babble or scrap

and here I am turning your trophies to scrap at an illicit viewing
but you do not have to forget
mourning and mirth are two extended wings
teetering on walkways that disappear

I have given up all hope for what was whole
the vacuous garment that limps at my heels as I go
like a medieval painting’s kindling
and with so much carrion in this graveyard for the sharp bones of my memory

to turn my teeth to knives
made out of soot, soup out of rust and,
we try to understand things, each in our own way
as an alchemist knows how to win your

sixty trillion cells, all drunk
with the live substance of a kiss
polished and repolished by the hands of strangers

​they are frozen
when there is nobody on earth who hears
nothing — you heard nothing.




[An A-Z through poetry. Sources in order of lines : Lot’s Wife, Anna Akhmatova/ A monologue of Prince Myshkin to the Ballet Pantomime of The Idiot, Ingeborg Bachman / The Fish, Billy Collins / His Picture, Elegie V, John Donne  / No, never have I felt so tired, Sergei Esenin) / International Bridge Playing Women, Mark Ford / Vespers, Louise Glück  / I’d played silence but later realised my word, Terence Hayes / Past caring, Mick Imlah / But you do not have to forget, Juan Ramón Jiménez /Lament 9, Jan Kochanowski / The Duckboards, Michael Longley / Migraine, Sinéad Morrisey / Whoever intends me harm, Pablo Neruda / The Haircut, Sharon Olds / A Musical Hell, Alejandra Pizarnik / ode to new money, Noel Quiñones /  Daydreaming in the midst of spring labours, Aleksander Ristovic / The Silence of Plants, Wisława Szymborska / Wherever you are I can reach you, Marina Tsvetaeva / A drunkard, Ko Un / The Footsteps, Paul Valéry / The Divided Child, Derek Walcott / Empty Chairs, Liu Xia / A Father’s Ear, Yevgeny Yevtushenko / Siren and Signal, Louis Zukofsky]

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  • Home
  • Blog
  • Theatre
    • Aching Parts
    • Take me to where the arrows no longer fall
    • The Right Kind of Violence
    • Own Goal
    • Mooring
    • Yellow Fever
    • Just Like Flies
    • Snap
    • Home
    • Vex
  • 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
  • POETRY
    • 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?
  • LIVEWORKS
    • Notes from a wanderer
  • News
  • New Page
  • Contact