frozen in space,
dressed like a wrist with jade and jet;
or Bobo – as I named him –
his heavy puss
pursed like a clown’s,
like a freshly-sprung mushroom
observing silence . . .
I miss being part of the known
quantifiable index,
the massive mouths of children
smearing the glass case –
sometimes shocked
and crying, more often
delighted to learn of my fate,
sneaking pictures
for school reports. Their flashes
filled me up with light
like water
would a calabash
or cauterizing beams from night-
security did the displays.
For hours after
I’d see patterns that couldn’t be real,
shadow plays,
huge birds fighting each other
up the loaded walls;
I’d imagine
hands to rub my eyelids with,
lift them and feel
the cross-stitches holding me in,
my vengeful breath
trapped beneath their seals,
wanting for the first
time in lifetimes to exhale,
to spit red berries
or the prattle of a curse . . .
then that would fail
in the force of my several injuries
and I’d seem to drop
towards a far ocean,
armless, footless, a seed-head blown
without will or hope
or wishing-upon
through the middle of a crown
to land on my shelf
under rows of wooden masks
and blown birds’ eggs,
smelling the open jar of myself –
salt-sweet as tamarisk,
mild as figs.
Story
Under what tree, in what part of the forest, beside which branch of the leaf-obstructed stream, in sun or in rain,
concreted into what foundation, supporting whose house, deaf to how many dinner parties, subjected to how many holding-forths,
compacted along with what model of car, with what registration, wearing which perfume and what sort of pearls,
in the back-of-beyond of what country, adjoining whose underdevelopment land, masked by which strain of animal fodder’s
pollen blown from the next field along, belonging to whom, missed by whom, questioned by which particular method, scarred where,
repaired where, reopened how, broken how,
how taken care of, transported how, buried
how, in what manner and from what platform disclaimed
during which international crisis, during which electoral year,
under whose watch, under whose watch
and why will it surface, why will it then be permitted to surface,
the end of the story, the body we need?
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Poems from this book were first published in Dear World & Everyone In It, Edinburgh Review, the Guardian, London Review of Books, Manchester Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, the Nation, Oxford Poets 2013, Poetry, Poetry London, Silk Road Review and the Times Literary Supplement, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. ‘Woodland Burial’ was commissioned by the National Gallery for Metamorphosis: Titian 2012. My thanks to Arts Council England and the Authors’ Foundation for their support. And thanks to Paul Batchelor most of all.
Disinformation
FRANCES LEVISTON was born in Edinburgh in 1982. She grew up in Sheffield and read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. In 2006 she received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. Public Dream, her first collection, was published in 2007 by Picador and shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, the London Review of Books, the Guardian, The Times, the TLS, and various anthologies.
Also by Frances Leviston
Public Dream
First published 2015 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2015 by Picador
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ISBN 978-1-4472-7115-4
Copyright © Frances Leviston 2015
The cover shows Love in the Morning by Wayne Sleeth, 2006, www.waynesleeth.com. Private Collection.
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The right of Frances Leviston to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
George Seferis. George Seferis: Collected Poems.
Translated and edited by Edmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard.
© 1995 Princeton University Press.
Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
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