Michael Symmons Roberts

I found the world’s pelt
nailed to the picture-rail
of a box-room in a cheap hotel.

So that’s why rivers dry to scabs,
that’s why the grass weeps every dawn,
that’s why the wind feels raw:

the earth’s an open wound,
and here, its skin hangs
like a trophy, atrophied beyond all

taxidermy, shrunk into a hearth rug.
Who fleeced it?
No record in the guest-book.

No-one paid, just pocketed the blade
and walked, leaving the bed
untouched, TV pleasing itself.

Maybe there was no knife.
Maybe the world shrugs off a hide
each year to grow a fresh one.

That pelt was thick as reindeer,
so black it flashed with blue.
I tried it on, of course, but no.

A rare dish is right for those who

have lain bandaged in a tomb for weeks:

quince and quail to demonstrate

that fruit and birds still grow on trees,

eels to show that fish still needle streams.

Rarer still, some blind white crabs,

not bleached but blank, from such

a depth of ocean that the sun would drown

if it approached them. Two-thirds

of the earth is sea; and two-thirds of that sea

-away from currents, coasts and reefs –

is lifeless, colourless, pure weight.

        IX

You’ve left the world. There. The land

was thin. The land, let’s be honest, was dying.

        X

Technically, this is the crux.

You are living a half-life between

two elements. You may wish at this stage

to be photographed or painted.

Now you know what your solidity is for:

so gravity has something to work with.

        I

When we overwhelm a village,

I am told to make sure

none will ever pull a trigger.

I go in with a machete,

come out with a sack of hands.

My fathers feed me, count the pairs.

In the darkness I feel cool

palms crawl up to stroke

my head, soft hairless

hand-backs on my cheeks.

Thumbs draw down my eyelids,

fingers shush my lips.

        II

In a terracotta jar,

a tobacco-brown plant,

tight as a mummified fist.

‘Leave it in the rain,

and see what happens.’

So we tipped it in the sink.

Amid the crockery

it unfurled and began to beg:

ever open, plaintive.

We kept it watered,

then, sick of supplication –

left it in the sun to clench.