Poem
Michael Symmons Roberts
Pelt
Pelt
Pelt
I found the world’s peltnailed to the picture-rail
of a box-room in a cheap hotel.
So that’s why rivers dry to scabs,
that’s why the grass weeps every dawn,
that’s why the wind feels raw:
the earth’s an open wound,
and here, its skin hangs
like a trophy, atrophied beyond all
taxidermy, shrunk into a hearth rug.
Who fleeced it?
No record in the guest-book.
No-one paid, just pocketed the blade
and walked, leaving the bed
untouched, TV pleasing itself.
Maybe there was no knife.
Maybe the world shrugs off a hide
each year to grow a fresh one.
That pelt was thick as reindeer,
so black it flashed with blue.
I tried it on, of course, but no.
© 2004, Michael Symmons Roberts
From: Corpus
Publisher: Jonathan Cape, London
From: Corpus
Publisher: Jonathan Cape, London
Michael Symmons Roberts
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1963)
Michael Symmons Roberts is a poet, librettist and novelist. His poetry is known for its expression of spiritual concerns through physical – especially bodily – realities, earning him the reputation of a modern metaphysical poet. He remains one of the few poets in Britain who are writing overtly religious poetry in a way that engages with modern tropes, and modern doubt.
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Poems of Michael Symmons Roberts
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Pelt
I found the world’s peltnailed to the picture-rail
of a box-room in a cheap hotel.
So that’s why rivers dry to scabs,
that’s why the grass weeps every dawn,
that’s why the wind feels raw:
the earth’s an open wound,
and here, its skin hangs
like a trophy, atrophied beyond all
taxidermy, shrunk into a hearth rug.
Who fleeced it?
No record in the guest-book.
No-one paid, just pocketed the blade
and walked, leaving the bed
untouched, TV pleasing itself.
Maybe there was no knife.
Maybe the world shrugs off a hide
each year to grow a fresh one.
That pelt was thick as reindeer,
so black it flashed with blue.
I tried it on, of course, but no.
From: Corpus
Pelt
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