Poem
Pauline Stainer
After the Ark
After the Ark
After the Ark
It’s not toldhow the animals left,
but waiting to disembark
their breath formed a cloud
and fell as light rain.
It gathered in hollows
under their eyes,
the peaceable kingdom
laid down, like memory
in a library of water
and long after landing
they would watch
for the waterspouts
and that mysterious fall
of fish from the air.
© 2008, Pauline Stainer
From: Crossing the Snowline
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books, Northumberland
From: Crossing the Snowline
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books, Northumberland
Pauline Stainer
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1941)
Pauline Stainer has always worked outside the metropolitan poetry community. Yet she won first prize in the Stroud Festival poetry competition in 1984, and has won major awards in several other competitions, including the TLS and the King’\'s Lynn, Cheltenham, Leek, Hastings and York festival competitions. She was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship in 1987, and came to wider notice with her quiet...
Poems
Poems of Pauline Stainer
Close
After the Ark
It’s not toldhow the animals left,
but waiting to disembark
their breath formed a cloud
and fell as light rain.
It gathered in hollows
under their eyes,
the peaceable kingdom
laid down, like memory
in a library of water
and long after landing
they would watch
for the waterspouts
and that mysterious fall
of fish from the air.
From: Crossing the Snowline
After the Ark
Sponsors
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère