Tag Archives: Sarah James

Means to an End by Sarah James

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Forty years ago, I was a miracle
created in their test tube; no choice
of eye, hair or face colour.

Touch their new orchids and pollen
yellows fingers. Lift a stalk, I’d swear
it weeps sap. The one give-away

is when I pull a petal, and silk
comes loose, unbruised. Short-sighted,
I watch Extant’s sci-fi future

through the specs I need to see unblurred,
on a mobile that rests as flat and snug
in my hand as if it were my palm.

Imagine soon a robot best friend,
eyes that magnify and x-ray,
legs powered at twice-light-speed…

We could walk for miles and miles
beyond the Google-mapped globe
to anywhere invention leads us.

But how will we know the world’s end
before we reach it?

..

Sarah James is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer and journalist. Her latest collection is plenty-fish (Nine Arches Press, 2015) and her 2015 Overton Poetry Prize pamphlet is forthcoming from Loughborough University. Sarah’s poetry  narrative, The Magnetic Diaries (KFS, 2015), was highly commended in the Forward Prizes and staged at The Courtyard, Hereford. Hearth, written with Angela Topping, was a Poetry Book Society autumn pamphlet 2015. Her website is at www.sarah-james.co.uk and she runs V. Press (http://vpresspoetry.blogspot.co.uk/).

King of Paroles and Histoires by Sarah James

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After Geoffrey Hill’s Mercian Hymns

 

I

 

Knight of black and white, righter of cherry trees, slow leaver of coffee cups, waiter on none but the big screen before big got to imax it, before Besson, Béart or that infamous man with the big nose. Zoom to seen in colour, then on to words lifted from a printed page. Sovereign of oranges and zest, of dresses on the floor and song birds in barred cages. Forecaster of war and all the rain in Brest. Reeler of the real, crowned in cigarette haloes – smoke that curls like the River Seine, like the discarded peel in Alicante, as vin rouge on the tongue, la belle langue in the throat, my future loves whirring through his hand – some decades before I know them – and the off-cuts purring at his feet, spooling unscripted.

 

‘A fine piece of rhythmic cinema!” insisted Prévert. “Let’s roll it again. This time without pausing for Hello, or the inner poet, with a gap at the end for night noises, the sound of wet and good weather, and space in the sound-track for the applause of autumn leaves.”

 

II

 

Lullaby brother. Saintly scallops for cheesy ears. Master of rien, though plugged into pop culture, springing from the box (and page), changing the wheel on vehicles for expression …

 

…before early meadow eco-warriors and modern English dis-arrangements in the way we watch our infants, and strangers, with suspicion. Accented per se near or towards, or before a French glass.

 

XXX

 

Watching, reading, he merges with his characters          separates from his silhouette

then vanishes from the wide screen, as steam from a breakfast espresso

or words wiped from a misted surface.

 

The worlds he left behind            swirled like vin rouge in a glass, vowels in the mouth, film on a spool…
…………..lifted from any lifetime of kitchen tables, a cup,
………………………………………………..in the cup, a small spoon stirring.

 

 

[Links

cherry trees: http://xtream.online.fr/Prevert/quotes.html

infamous: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A9rard_Depardieu

cages: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-paint-the-portrait-of-a-bird-by-jacques-pr-vert/

Brest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP9SzHhnK4M

Alicante: http://www.poetry.byjp.me/poems/alicante

Prévert: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Pr%C3%A9vert

autumn leaves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9wiHCnkYcw&list=RDU9wiHCnkYcw

he: http://xtream.online.fr/Prevert/indexeng.html

stirring: http://frenchpoetrytranslations.blogspot.co.uk/ ]