Poem
Gillian Clarke
In the Reading Room
In the Reading Room
In the Reading Room
You scan the stream, silver-eyed as a heronsearching the surface for what might betray
a halt in the flow, pentameter’s delay,
a master’s faded words, his lexicon.
Before you, found in an old book
marking a page, a longhand manuscript.
Look, where the knib unloaded ink and dipped
and rose again, leaving a blot on the downstroke,
writing by candlelight in another century,
wind in the chimney, maybe, the pen’s small sound.
You write: ‘Anonymous. Date a mystery.
Some words illegible. No signature found.’
Yet the poem sings in your mind from the silent archive
and all the dead words speak, aloud, alive.
© 2011, Gillian Clarke
Publisher: First published on PIW,
An uncollected poem, published here with the kind permission of the author.
Publisher: First published on PIW,
Gillian Clarke
(Wales, 1937)
Gillian Clarke was born in Cardiff in 1937 and lives in Ceredigion. Poet, playwright, editor, broadcaster, lecturer and translator from Welsh, she was Editor of The Anglo Welsh Review 1974-1984. National Poet of Wales 2008-2016, she was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010 and the Wilfred Owen Award in 2012. She has published ten collections of poetry for adults, written radio and ...
Poems
Poems of Gillian Clarke
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In the Reading Room
You scan the stream, silver-eyed as a heronsearching the surface for what might betray
a halt in the flow, pentameter’s delay,
a master’s faded words, his lexicon.
Before you, found in an old book
marking a page, a longhand manuscript.
Look, where the knib unloaded ink and dipped
and rose again, leaving a blot on the downstroke,
writing by candlelight in another century,
wind in the chimney, maybe, the pen’s small sound.
You write: ‘Anonymous. Date a mystery.
Some words illegible. No signature found.’
Yet the poem sings in your mind from the silent archive
and all the dead words speak, aloud, alive.
In the Reading Room
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