fullman*

slow Sunday. it would have been nice to waste it on a good conversation – on what’s happening in Thailand and Hungary, which proves that a parliamentary form of government does not guarantee political stability or economic wealth; or why this flurry of naked Filipino men online may mean that it’s easier to get laid these days, but it should not be interpreted as synonymous to gay liberation; or why the cabinet and the bed my room have to go.

i’ve decided to spend most of the weekend online, and i stumbled upon Jeanette Winterson’s website, where I got introduced to Carol Ann Duffy. That’s where my weekend went: with poems so scorchingly true. it’ll be Monday again in a few hours, but i don’t regret being with Duffy most of the time.

PRAYER

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside the radio’s prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre

TEA

I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid streams in your china cup.

Or when you’re away, or at work,
I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,
as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.

I like the questions – sugar? – milk? –
and the answers I don’t know by heart, yet,
for I see your soul in your eyes, and I forget.

Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon,
I love tea’s names. Which tea would you like? I say
but it’s any tea for you, please, any time of day,

as the women harvest the slopes
for the sweetest leaves, on Mount Wu-Yi,
and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea.