Poem
John Glenday
Undark
Undark
Undark
And so they come back, those girls who paintedthe watch dials luminous and died.
They come back and their hands glow and their lips
and hair and their footprints gleam in the past like alien snow.
It was as if what shone in them once had broken free
and burned through the cotton of their lives.
And I want to know this: how they came to believe
that something so beautiful could ever have turned out right,
but though they open their mouths to answer me,
all I can hear is light.
© 1995, John Glenday
From: Undark
Publisher: Peterloo Poets, Calstock
Published with kind permission of the author.
From: Undark
Publisher: Peterloo Poets, Calstock
John Glenday
(Scotland, 1952)
John Glenday was born in Broughty Ferry, near Dundee, in 1952, and lives in Drumnadrochit in the Scottish Highlands. His first collection, The Apple Ghost (Peterloo Poets, 1989) won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and his second, Undark (Peterloo Poets, 1995), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. His most recent collection, Grain (Picador, 2009) was also a Poetry Book Society Recommenda...
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Undark
And so they come back, those girls who paintedthe watch dials luminous and died.
They come back and their hands glow and their lips
and hair and their footprints gleam in the past like alien snow.
It was as if what shone in them once had broken free
and burned through the cotton of their lives.
And I want to know this: how they came to believe
that something so beautiful could ever have turned out right,
but though they open their mouths to answer me,
all I can hear is light.
From: Undark
Published with kind permission of the author.
Undark
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