Poem
Tim Liardet
CALLING UGOLINO
CALLING UGOLINO
CALLING UGOLINO
Through what might bethe earpiece
or some grainier,
more primitive
instrument, brother,
or perhaps
the miracle
of the auditory
nerve, summoning
some signal,
a ruched pinhead
of decibels,
I imagined I might
be able
to hear your voice –
it would be faint
and strange,
belonging
as it does now
to another age,
the pauses
between it
prolonged by the whelm
of distance,
the static of water:
instead, the
soft voicemail
kicks in to say
you are
unavailable
to talk.
I had something
to say, I had
something
to say, I say
to the tape-hiss.
© 2008, Tim Liardet
From: PN Review # 179, Jan/Feb 2008
Publisher: Carcanet, Manchester
From: PN Review # 179, Jan/Feb 2008
Publisher: Carcanet, Manchester
Tim Liardet
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1959)
Tim Liardet was born in London in 1959 and was educated at the University of York. He has worked variously in the fields of cabinet-making, information technology and marketing, and lived for several years working solely as a freelance writer and critic. During this period he taught at the second-largest young offenders’ prison in Europe, drawing on this experience to write his prize-winning co...
Poems
Poems of Tim Liardet
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CALLING UGOLINO
Through what might bethe earpiece
or some grainier,
more primitive
instrument, brother,
or perhaps
the miracle
of the auditory
nerve, summoning
some signal,
a ruched pinhead
of decibels,
I imagined I might
be able
to hear your voice –
it would be faint
and strange,
belonging
as it does now
to another age,
the pauses
between it
prolonged by the whelm
of distance,
the static of water:
instead, the
soft voicemail
kicks in to say
you are
unavailable
to talk.
I had something
to say, I had
something
to say, I say
to the tape-hiss.
From: PN Review # 179, Jan/Feb 2008
CALLING UGOLINO
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