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Poem
(To A)

Harold Pinter

‘I shall miss you so much when I am dead’

From the Flood Plain

Jamie McKendrick

‘No flood as parched as this’

Après

Jamie McKendrick

‘greener / for an alien crop of hogweed higher / than us’

Eel Tail

Alice Oswald

‘untranslatable hissed interruptions / unspeakable wide chapped lips’

End of the Pier Show

Michael Hofmann

‘They were fascinated / by what they seemed to have contained.’

The Swing

Don Paterson

‘the honest fulcrum of the hour / that engineers our ghost’

The Joy of Difficulty

Lavinia Greenlaw

‘did you breathe differently / as if equipped with an aqualung’

17 Melbourne Road

Oliver Reynolds

‘A room at the top of the street / preserving his life in sunlight’

Somewhere the Wave

Derek Mahon

‘a voice, not quite a voice, in the sea distance / listening to its own thin cetaceous whistle’

High Table

Craig Raine

‘The inescapable smoke of her gown’

The New Hieroglyphics

Les Murray

‘Rice in bowl with chopsticks / denotes food. Figure 1 lying prone equals other.’

Sampati

Vikram Seth

‘Why do you cry?’

What we Lost

Michael Ondaatje

‘The pattern of teeth marks on skin’

Crusoe

Salman Rushdie

‘Let me tell you, boyo, bach: I love this place, where green hills shelter me from fear.’