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SOUTH AND
WEST
By
Paul Jeffcutt
I read letters from lovers
that couldn’t be saved,
and mine to her -
no answer came.
Packages of rain
wrap my
salutation,
a lament chancing westward
across deaf continents
to
broken
lands
that echo
far from home.
Navigating
the steps
each
night
I
throw sentences
to clouds
and bribe
the air with courtesy for dawn.
I have no prayer -
just a shout
held in,
the sound
of something without voice
that seems to give spiritual light.
In the
prison of
countless cries
there is no sun.
Beside her native lake
the ground
was dark and cold;
she had no shelter
stepping
to a place
whose
end was always near.
The voice
was soft, she said -
these words
may never reach you.
Sweet silhouette,
I fixed upon the glowing sky
and whispered -
my skin
dissolves in dew without your touch.
What else
could I say?
I’m traveling
through the world
that lies before me, endlessly.
It starts to
rain as I write this.
Mad heart,
be brave.
"South and West" is the Third Prize winning poem in the Sentinel
Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (January 2010)
Sources:
‘The Country Without a Post Office’ – Agha Shahid Ali (1997)
‘Stepping Westward’ – William Wordsworth (1803)
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