the unlearned lore

Received quite a few book-tokens over the Christmas-period (which I'm always very grateful for!); and have now added several new volumes to the ever-expanding poetry collection ...

... particularly enjoying the pictured 2017 Michael Symmons Roberts volume - thus, here's a favourite poem from within:


Mancunian Miserere

As I walk west on Cross Street have mercy on me, O God,
for the cold of my fingers, the clam of my palms,
for the knots I have tied in my tongue and for their undoing,
for my constancy of inattention, for my inner tension and its ills,
for the fact that the undersides of leaves (my mother told me)
are blown visible before a storm but I forget to look,
for the unlearned lore that rain when it runs unhindered
in a gutter will still trouble itself into opacity, for the cities
– rich, exotic, gifted – of my days that I have sacked, abandoned,
given up for the price of a light, my hands cupped in case
you try to blow it out, for thinking you would waste your breath on me,

for fearing you may not, for the coin-jar I save for a deluge,
for the wide berth I gave that man-cocoon asleep on the steps
of a new-closed bank where once I queued to find my balance,
for the stars I thank, for the losses I adjust, for the cost
have mercy, let the seas hold themselves, let the streets dry out
and flood instead the cambers, ventricles, capillaries of me,
prise my teeth apart O God that I might learn to praise.

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Michael Symmons Roberts (1963 - )

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