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The Glass Aisle Look Inside Flipbook PDF

The Glass Aisle Look Inside


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The Glass Aisle typesett_New Poetry Style 05/12/2017 09:52 Page 3

The Glass Aisle Paul Henry

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Contents I Cliff Terrace Clouds Last of the Sixties Mothers The Hesitant Song Put on the Sun Craiglais The Violin Dwynwen The Sea in Pieces Brown Helen Reclining The Fireplace The Wicker Gondola

9 10 11 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 26

II The Glass Aisle The Seamstress Green Man Walking Festival Field Naming the Cast

29 41 42 43 44

III Shelves The Father in the Well Grove Park The White-leaved Oak St Michael’s Lockyer’s Windfalls Blunt Razor Chainsaws in the Mist The STOP and GO Man The Nettle Race Not Stopping

47 48 49 50 51 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

Acknowledgements

60

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I The Hesitant Song

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Cliff Terrace Clouds The summer’s clouds are moving east. My father stokes their fires. They do not know it is winter, that I am already old. Over the Sugarloaf they go, full of my mother’s songs. Over the hill’s white pebbles, away, away from the sea.

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Last of the Sixties Mothers Waves curl up the estate, her wild strands in the wind. Anchored by her balcony gate she holds her highest ground, the jetsam of her decade beached on suburban drives – a dish-rack of forty-fives, melamine picnic plates, starburst clocks, half-alive, shrivelled inflatable chairs… She calls out our names in case we are still here, our satchel bells in the wind, our buckled sandal-chimes rising up the pavement on the afternoon tide.

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