Three Poems by Paul Demuth

 

THE SHIPWRECK’S BAR

 

The frosted shards,

For half a century tumbled by the yaw

 

Of the barnacled hull,

Cannot be pieced together

To articulate glassware again.

 

In the silence of the ocean’s floor,

Erosion has rounded their edges,

Like the blunted consonants

 

Of syllables

A deaf man hears,

Or the slurred speech

of a drunkard;

 

The unindented vowels

Bereft of jags,

 

No longer interlocking to transmute 

An anchor

 

Into a tanker,

Still less a tankard

 

 

HOOP ANCHOR TOP EGG

 

one morning, on the Tube,

Josie named each letter she saw

after the things they stand for

in her alphabet picture book

 

a man, with a letter tattooed

on each finger of each hand,

sat beside her, slumbering

 

'Hoop,’ she began.

‘Anchor. Top. Egg.’

 

'That's very good,’ I said.

'Soon you’ll be able to read.’

 

 

SUNDAY

 

She lies on her belly, naked,

As the bells of the Sacred Heart resound,

Her legs together, straight.

 

From sacrum to big toes a cleavage runs,

Dividing buttocks, thighs, calves, ankles, soles.

 

It's intersected by a second line,

The crease along the bottom’s lower verge,

 

Completing the figure of a cross,

Which, kneeling, he bends to kiss.

Paul Demuth - I like the sound of my name ‘Paul’ because it chimes nicely with whoever I am.