Poem
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
BRIGHTON WEST PIER
BRIGHTON WEST PIER
BRIGHTON WEST PIER
Last week I saw it again, staggeringlike a shot beast in the high tide,
the pavilion a skull half sunk, gnawing
at its stilts. A telephone receiver swung
from the tangled guts of the bar.
Of course I have witnessed dereliction before:
mantelpieces three floors up,
the remnants of passion fluttering
in the torn wallpaper of virtual rooms,
the cross-section of intimacy.
But this reclaiming by sea of our
tentative steps leaves me
precarious: those Saturday nights
when I would catch my breath outside
its stuccoed façade, stilettoed,
tiptoeing between strips of sea foaming
below, a note from a saxophone
thrown to the wind, hearing his voice
on the line half a century ago,
still swaying there.
© 2008, Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
From: Not In These Shoes
Publisher: Picador, London
From: Not In These Shoes
Publisher: Picador, London
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1966)
Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch grew up in New Quay, Ceredigion. After reading Classics at Cambridge University, she took an MA in Creative Writing at Cardiff University. She lived in Oxford, Paris and the Isles of Scilly before returning to New Quay. Her work has been shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award (2014), the Roland Mathias Prize (2013) and Wales Book of the Year (2009). Samantha has taught...
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Poems of Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
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BRIGHTON WEST PIER
Last week I saw it again, staggeringlike a shot beast in the high tide,
the pavilion a skull half sunk, gnawing
at its stilts. A telephone receiver swung
from the tangled guts of the bar.
Of course I have witnessed dereliction before:
mantelpieces three floors up,
the remnants of passion fluttering
in the torn wallpaper of virtual rooms,
the cross-section of intimacy.
But this reclaiming by sea of our
tentative steps leaves me
precarious: those Saturday nights
when I would catch my breath outside
its stuccoed façade, stilettoed,
tiptoeing between strips of sea foaming
below, a note from a saxophone
thrown to the wind, hearing his voice
on the line half a century ago,
still swaying there.
From: Not In These Shoes
BRIGHTON WEST PIER
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