This is something I've been trying to get 'right' for ages. It's not
meant for a collection of dried flowers, but I have a struggle with
it. I think it tries to sound a bit too Geoffrey Hill-ish, I'd welcome
Dom's thoughts on that.
From the Municipal Vaults
Their city began with swapped knives at a cold ford, with a straggle
of lime-and-wattle, for the hide-and-cord clad struggle off the hills,
a riverbed bend from marsh and malaria, on a slow low navigation, a
tired halt for the daubed.
From the grey, unthinkable seas, a language of a continent overcame.
Stark coinage rolled on straw-carpeted floors, a stone prefecture looked on
over mathematics of market squares. Exchange, the grid-lines whispered. At
tribes of dialect dropped like brooches, pins and cracked earthenglaze.
At a tribe
who were a content people. Whose names meant Mould, Suckling, Bacon.
Who left no rustle of speech.
And the grey seas, unthinkable, coursed through the drifting river under clay
skies, and with blind purity, washed their lives away. Leaving brown scraps
of twill, frayed twines that rotted as the mud climbed.
2008/6/28 M. Borges Accardi <[log in to unmask]>:
> Are there updates on?the?Poetry etc anthology?
>
> Did you get all the submissions you needed?
>
--
David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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