The wind all night, its heavy traffic
crashing through eternity
a street or two away. I see now
if the moon was not nailed down
the sky itself would go.
The trellis is a shipwreck,
lashed and beaten, all hands lost.
I did this in my sleep. Must I remember?
Penelope, it must be hidden somewhere
in a drawer beneath the jumpers,
in a box beneath the earth,
King Aeolus’s leather purse. Where is it?
Find it. Fetch your needle now. Stitch up
the ragged mouth and stop it screaming.
Sean O’Brien’s eleventh collection of poems, Embark, was published by Picador in 2022. His chapbook Impasse: Poems for Jules Maigret, is to be published by Hercules Editions this month. He is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University.
crashing through eternity
a street or two away. I see now
if the moon was not nailed down
the sky itself would go.
The trellis is a shipwreck,
lashed and beaten, all hands lost.
I did this in my sleep. Must I remember?
Penelope, it must be hidden somewhere
in a drawer beneath the jumpers,
in a box beneath the earth,
King Aeolus’s leather purse. Where is it?
Find it. Fetch your needle now. Stitch up
the ragged mouth and stop it screaming.
Sean O’Brien’s eleventh collection of poems, Embark, was published by Picador in 2022. His chapbook Impasse: Poems for Jules Maigret, is to be published by Hercules Editions this month. He is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University.
