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Poetry

On a Boat with Day-Lewis at Dawn

By Emma Large

 

For my grandfather

 

There was a ship on the starline

Where the water met its flank, up

And out and up like a quiet breath. 

A day, he had dared Day-Lewis, 

 

On its starboard bank; his arrogance brined

With spirits, the curdled wine from the engine

Tank. A day to beat you at your craft. The cleft

In him ran through it, as it did his life,

 

To fill that floating place: the eccentricity of 

His kindness, his fluency for endless speech

That flew without taking shape. I don’t know

How his poem read (the things

 

I’ll never know) – but he went, gleeful, to the poet’s room

As the sky was laced with morning. Look!

Your craft is mine; smugly, like a new-born;

Standing out on starboard side, yawning in the sun.

 

I am never too far away from here: this 

Is where I am from. The ramblings of a try-hard poet, 

On a boat with Day-Lewis at dawn.

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