After the denunciation they came piling in,
Even the static of my clothes hurt,
The handle of a door stung like a bee.
I couldn’t walk it off in the skiffs of rain
Along the dreamy sea coast that late spring,
They dogged me, my blunderings,
Like Chinese whispers, twitching curtains,
And the birds in the trees scattered
While those I once knew gave only
A blank stare to my salutations,
Wisps of cloud rose skywards
Through the Velux I’d grown used to
And the empty yards all shadow
And shade. Further afield,
The followers stormed the sacred gate
And all the lost were named.
Gerald Dawe’s most recent collection, The Last Peacock, was published in 2019. A City Imagined, the third and final instalment of Northern Chronicles, was published earlier this year
Even the static of my clothes hurt,
The handle of a door stung like a bee.
I couldn’t walk it off in the skiffs of rain
Along the dreamy sea coast that late spring,
They dogged me, my blunderings,
Like Chinese whispers, twitching curtains,
And the birds in the trees scattered
While those I once knew gave only
A blank stare to my salutations,
Wisps of cloud rose skywards
Through the Velux I’d grown used to
And the empty yards all shadow
And shade. Further afield,
The followers stormed the sacred gate
And all the lost were named.
Gerald Dawe’s most recent collection, The Last Peacock, was published in 2019. A City Imagined, the third and final instalment of Northern Chronicles, was published earlier this year
