ANNE ROUSE

Nocturne

Great aunts in wicker armchairs,
snow drifts, a pink 50's kitchen.
Throaty, Victorian triumph. Gin!
They were here all the time.

The old affections, they rise like bruises.
I lie face up on the bed.
Even the yellow dog we had
finds her way back, muddied, done in.

The tree in the alley dangles its claws
over the green, and ghostly blooms.
The sky, night-streaked and opaque,
turns outward, to the ignorant distances.

Telegraph Pole

A telegraph pole rides prone
on the flatbed of a lorry,
its periwig awry, the white
ceramic conductors twined with rust:
creosoted, splintered tree of knowledge,
draped with jackdaw litter, hung with talk.

It fell last night, in the gale,
and rides through burnished streets
to the lumber yard.

Black wires underscore the horizon.
Poles march over the reedbed,
rootless, and branchless.
Clamped horizontal to the lorry bed,
Ajax borne off on the field of Troy.

From The School of Night (Bloodaxe, 2004)

Also available from Amazon.co.uk:

Timing (Bloodaxe, 1997)
Sunset Grill (Bloodaxe, 1993)

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