Poems by Estill Pollock

Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Poetry

The women clutching 
Hymnals, circling the table

Empty chairs around an empty table 

In the next room, someone 
Listening at the door
For the order of service, of reliquaries 
And expendables

Like slipknot chords on the fret board 
Of an old guitar 

Or a tributary of the Nile, once 
Choked with barges, with stone
And labour, now sand in the mouth

In the next room, someone listening 
For the order of service, the subterfuge 
Of empty chairs around an empty table 

Of what shall be, and what shall not be

The women, circling and circling

 

Attributed

Victorians in extremis

Laura Riding, Robert Graves
Her slave—he
Mad from trenches, from corpses on staves
Grinning at the parapet, she
Nursing her divinity, non compos mentis
Their common ground, each
Tantrum, domestic as a ripened peach

In guises subsidiary
To events
She reinvents
Herself as heroine of a diary
Edited by Graves, but to her dictation, while
Tortured syntax body-doubled style

In their absence
From Majorca, Laura’s instructions tense
On parting—their grubby walls a local girl
Whitewashed at her peril