Clay
im Camille Claudel
Clay is its own reward
for all the time it takes
to work on the explicit touch of skin
on skin’s remembrance in the eye
and the delight of re-appearance
in its own image
that might breathe again
all the quick light and salamander air
of its eternity and judgement
and damnation.
O it is finished and dried out,
the angles softened into loss of life,
the consummatum of my new
and hardened patience of disguise
under the taut and lowering sky
of this new heaven’s creation
where the touch is unchangeable
and hard upon the dull and cobalt colouring
of old desire.
Finished and stale as the pale
call of memories dry up
into the skull’s opacity
and the clock’s beat and beat
by cloud and cloud
and what was in the sun cradles
old thoughts of our bronze cooling
into the surface here in Neuilly.
David Pollard has been a furniture salesman, accountant, TEFL teacher and university lecturer. He has published four volumes of poetry, patricides, Risk of Skin, Self-Portraits (all from Waterloo Press), bedbound (from Perdika Press) and Finis-terre (from Agenda Editions). More details at his website and at Wikipedia.
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