Gillian Prew

from "The Black Stanzas"

 

(i) a yoke of blood/my iris-eye

 

Too narrow and grief/stressed by what the toil has tied me to/

a yoke of blood and the weeping flies. All-droop

the black leaking/the drip of wet dust being born. Sun,

the magic sleeper roofed-out and black. Black again

men’s hearts/winter hearts/bags of breathless black.

First spring snowdrop from my iris-eye blooming here

on the concrete/its white-scented sisters a wood away.

 

 

(ii) a road of blood/a dome of cold

 

Like snow on the moon the cold tucked-in all glass

and weeping winter motes/a road of blood/ of red-

pepper tones tucked-up in a dome of cold. Blue,

the silent summer throats hooked and stuck. Hauled/

black salts/the wounds of weak indifference gold.

 

 

(iii) the crush of life/the food I am

 

A scrape/a stun/a sticking knife. The crush of life/

the food I am.  Up-bent and ruined red. Red into

the sticking black. Shut-down and meat/no epitaph.

 

 

(iv) a black hole/a blue planet

 

Is to slow darken/is to stagger,           spin.

Myself nothing/a truckload of me nothing/

a black hole of us fading. A pinhole of sky

a blue planet/an eye.

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