Candice -three poems, I sent them to your reply address but just got a
failure notice, so am sending them this way. Pl let me know if you can use
any.
They are from a series I am doing called Unpoems (possibly intertextual
self translations.)
If you do go for online
publication you could include illustrations with the poems, of course..
Unpoem at Hadrian's Wall.
The unpoem is here, beside a fence,
a stile, long grass and buttercups.
The unpoem is past the molehills.
The unpoem is by the Roman Camp,
old Brocolitia, now Carrawburgh -
crows' land or cabbage patch.
The unpoem is the Mithras Temple
discovered round the back, the walls
still clear, stone altars, wicker screens,
beasts' heads, the valuables
removed to a small museum
in King's College Gatehouse.
The unpoem is the journey that began
to unlock my imagination way back then.
At the Antonine Wall
It scars the dullest part of Scotland,
obliterated under warehouses,
short term railways, housing schemes,
the outskirts of uncertain villages.
Or suddenly it scythes a wood,
a shocking vallum, double walled,
a stretch beside a minor road,
an earthwork, an ungainly ridge.
We never quite believed in it,
constructed to last only decades,
land-engineering that has worn
longer than those patched canals,
in places rubbish-strewn, employed to dump
ungainly memories, or vanished legions.
At Carter Bar
Most times of year there's a tea van.
In summer a piper stands and plays,
looking cold. Every time the view's fantastic.
A table of the serried hills
invites the traveller north to Scotland,
while a long, harsh, moorland slope
slithers south towards the Tyne and England.
Don't be fooled by the boundary stone:
this is neither of these lands, not both,
it is the breath you take while the chameleon
in your mind changes to match
the Northumberland cloudline of Cheviot,
or the Lothian lowland, to Forth.
It is where you count change for your blessings.
Sally Evans
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