Issue 1: July 2003

Karen Annesen | Simon Barraclough | Helen Clare | Simon Rees-Roberts | John Stammers | Roisin Tierney

JOHN STAMMERS

Furthermore the Avenue

Furthermore the avenue recedes,
all the tables set out for le déjeuner,
tiny crabs are spots of cochineal on saffron rice,
their one pink day is going well so far.
Platters of sea-bass, gambas and trinkling glass
do nothing but vie with the C-sharp of Lambrettas
that dopple off down the street to G.

Your features etch an outline in the noon UV,
your profile against the duck-egg blue sun blind — such a line!
Would you like more of the salade d'epinards we ordered? —
espèce de folie! espèce de grandeur de salade! — less is off the menu.
Vague clouds run their hands through their coiffure,
bring their lips together in a moue.

A look from you on this cours provençale,
a smile from you in this air — itself warmed with aromatic herbs —
a word from you could introduce a certain à propos
across the reticent white tablecloth.

The day turns, a turn of your head
and a glance along the avenue.

Younger

A hundred lives ago with someone like you
up among the stucco wedding cakes of Campden Hill,
before the absolute estoppel
of split-up and the long-range meteorology
of becoming old friends,
before swagger became stagger,
before my first look in the mirror of Dorian Grey,
I stood in front of the big, studio window
and thought I could really see
the hyper-bright air, the warm days roll in,
the anticyclone isobars
drawn languidly across the southern hemisphere of my life.

Sometimes I see the open window:
in the variegated light that can occur in a room,
in cloud shapes observable after rain,
or when I talk with you of what you will come to do.

These poems will appear in John Stammers' new collection due from Picador next year. He has just completed a year as Judith E Wilson Fellow at Cambridge. His web site is at www.johnstammers.co.uk.

Available from Amazon.co.uk: Panoramic Lounge-bar (Picador, 2001)