Moving into the false address you’d given
you threw all the skylights open.
The bride wore ruched blue silk, her eyes
underscored and veiled, as in not quite open.
As you said I’m not finished yet, I watched
your hands on the wheel twist, and open.
I think of you at night when cars make tracks up
from the coast-road and cut half the sky open.
I’ve twice seen the truth of the words rabbit in
the headlights reflected in your face: O, pen.
Those lines we draw in the sand, reversible –
as for open read shut, for shut read open.
This is where I stand: under a rooflight of stars
in an attic room where all my books lie open.
Out of the sky-blue on the beach a box kite,
wind singing its strings, its four sides open.
Your face an empty house, its walls bone
china white, its windows blown –
Jane Griffiths’s Another Country: New and Selected Poems was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for best collection in 2008. Other collections from Bloodaxe include Terrestrial Variations, Silent in Finisterre and Little Silver. She teaches at Wadham College, Oxford, and is literary editor of Oxford Magazine
you threw all the skylights open.
The bride wore ruched blue silk, her eyes
underscored and veiled, as in not quite open.
As you said I’m not finished yet, I watched
your hands on the wheel twist, and open.
I think of you at night when cars make tracks up
from the coast-road and cut half the sky open.
I’ve twice seen the truth of the words rabbit in
the headlights reflected in your face: O, pen.
Those lines we draw in the sand, reversible –
as for open read shut, for shut read open.
This is where I stand: under a rooflight of stars
in an attic room where all my books lie open.
Out of the sky-blue on the beach a box kite,
wind singing its strings, its four sides open.
Your face an empty house, its walls bone
china white, its windows blown –
Jane Griffiths’s Another Country: New and Selected Poems was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for best collection in 2008. Other collections from Bloodaxe include Terrestrial Variations, Silent in Finisterre and Little Silver. She teaches at Wadham College, Oxford, and is literary editor of Oxford Magazine
