The following poem appears with kind permission of the poet and writing teacher, Isabel Palmer, and of Stand Magazine, her publishers. It will be published in Stand magazine later this month. (posted 9.11.2017)
Poppies
‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’
Tower of London, November 2014
“But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only that one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour … Nevermore.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven
From here, the Weeping Window is a mermaid’s tail,
poppies snagged like gills, fins, severed tail flukes
on the drift net of her scales.
The Tower has all her human parts, her voice lost
in stone walls and silence, her soul trapped
in war-grave Portland stone.
Beneath her, the rootless sea, the tumbling tide
that shapes the salt-glazed blooms
of clay and wire and washer, with braided collars,
crimson epaulettes and darts of flesh like birds’ tongues.
Each flower’s hand-made, its shape
and colour all its own, like a grain of sand: this one,
polished garnet that the waves forgot, this
a glassy red and this, moon-made
by dust from meteor-strikes
or mingled with spines of sea-urchins,
chipped shells, the skeletons of sponges.
Here, a coral reef rubbles
the ragged tide-line. There, a wave
goes over the top, washes all
before it out to sea, shipwrecks
far-off faces on a sunset beach,
while ravens, mad as priests, spin
from battlements, rough and tumble
with the bugling wind, drop the bloody scraps
of their one and only word.
Isabel Palmer
‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’
Tower of London, November 2014
“But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only that one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour … Nevermore.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven
From here, the Weeping Window is a mermaid’s tail,
poppies snagged like gills, fins, severed tail flukes
on the drift net of her scales.
The Tower has all her human parts, her voice lost
in stone walls and silence, her soul trapped
in war-grave Portland stone.
Beneath her, the rootless sea, the tumbling tide
that shapes the salt-glazed blooms
of clay and wire and washer, with braided collars,
crimson epaulettes and darts of flesh like birds’ tongues.
Each flower’s hand-made, its shape
and colour all its own, like a grain of sand: this one,
polished garnet that the waves forgot, this
a glassy red and this, moon-made
by dust from meteor-strikes
or mingled with spines of sea-urchins,
chipped shells, the skeletons of sponges.
Here, a coral reef rubbles
the ragged tide-line. There, a wave
goes over the top, washes all
before it out to sea, shipwrecks
far-off faces on a sunset beach,
while ravens, mad as priests, spin
from battlements, rough and tumble
with the bugling wind, drop the bloody scraps
of their one and only word.
Isabel Palmer
Isabel Palmer is the new co-editor of Flarestack Poets. Her first pamphlet, ‘Ground Signs’ (Flarestack Poets 2014) was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Her first full collection ‘Atmospherics’, with a Foreword by former Poet Laureate, Sir Andrew Motion, was published by Bloodaxe Books in a four-poet book, ‘Home Front’ in 2016. She has performed at Literature Festivals and events in Presteigne, Swindon, Sheffield, Leicester and London and has been interviewed by Martha Kearney on Radio 4’s the World at One and on BBC Wiltshire. A former teacher, she has been Poet in Residence at schools in Wiltshire and London.
Click here to read Isabel's thoughts on the editing process.
Click here to read Isabel's thoughts on the editing process.