Bravo
i.m. JP
Down the middle of our street’s
a table
where odds and events might meet
and its cloth is the skirt of
the night-duty nurse
or an altar prepared for a
feast.
It’s midnight but it’s not that
scary
when you’ve been in the woods
as often as we have, and it’s
tranquil.
This
is not the darkness you think it
is –
see how vision deepens:
dashboard dials,
rain on a kerb stone, the
blurred heart
of a bird in flight, icebergs
everywhere.
On the night-table, sugar in
infinite detail,
sweetmeats, silver in the shape
of a prayer,
something from every house in
the road.
Fear
nothing. It is not over yet.
Soon we will have a whole city
of light.
Over
takes its title from a sequence of
twenty-six poems based on the
international phonetic alphabet:
Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta...
In these and other pieces Draycott
creates a world of echoing voices
and reflections. She evokes the
mirrors and doorways, dreams and
night-time journeys that transform
the familiar: entrances into a
different reality.
Draycott
will be supported by Amsterdam-based
English poets and writers Amal
Chatterjee, Kate Foley
and Annette van Baalen.
|
