Author: Esme Bell

By Esme Bell

This gold afternoon tastes of crying – 

A scalded throat caught in hoar-frost

Breath and last-time wistful sun. Leaves, day, 

Year – all wryly clench their trembling chin, 

Strong as the sky, who veils her damp eyes 

In gulping cloud. Like Persephone, 

They know the end: feel the pricking

Of pitiless stars and the canine 

Leanness of watchful early dusk. 

We walk back under this mourning,

These plaintive funeral jewels –

And we are glad, we say, to reach home.

By Esme Bell

Whorl is a word that should be 

Licked. Nutty and round, nearly 

Hollow but rich things are tricked 

Underneath. Strange, how 

Someone so brown can wield such 

Silver. You can stroke a garden wall 

With one finger and know everything.  

An agent of slow truths: what grass 

Really feels: how rain doesn’t fall but 

Weeps – my eyes, somehow less than 

Two, don’t feel like you do. Tell me 

Small fresh secrets; smile in the dawn; 

And avoid the boot, fat and over-strong. 

The day will crack and the air will flay 

Into a weal: you can’t even scream under 

This new terror, this brazen sky. 

 

Crime is a small word for this large splinter  

Of space hard wedged in my shoe, 

But the blackbird still cries and 

Somewhere, so does the rain.