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Poetry

Cathedral 

By Emma Large


Labouring against me

in the sun-sucked twilight: our coolness


and the cold empire of the cathedral, my own

hurt grating against my ribs like the pluck


of fingers down banister rungs; the image

of us is numbed in the frost, without feeling. 


I sit with my books and learn how to let go.

Then I’ll let the hot rock smoke 


of a cigarette lick into my afternoons, 

my evenings – the salt ash ruminates


on the living room floor, puddles on cathedral stone.

The nightly toothache of yearning 


will spur me to my work, to be better, to grow out

my hair: all my desperate efforts, our image 


flaming to desire, without reason. I look to the church

and wonder how they bear what they bear. Their unrequited


toil, to love what is missing, an Absence so silent

they fill its mouth with their words: the hope of you 

comes to me like that, so warming, so willing.

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