By Denise O’Hagan.
you had your doubts, but hell, it was so cheap,
in ‘very good condition’ and you never could resist
a bargain. And it’s not until you meet a pencilled underlining, an asterisk with its coded implication,
the unmissable fluorescent assault on blue and water
and ‘address to a dead person’ penned in regular
cubes of backward-leaning writing next to the title
of your favourite poem that you feel a creeping
as of the finest mist between you and the poems
in your hands, and admit you haven’t taken in a single
thing for the last ten minutes, that there’s no point,
no point at all, in your stubborn progression to the end
as a star of realisation explodes in the night of your mind
at the beautiful folly of trying to interpret its shine.
