Poem
Jane Yeh
The Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites
‘What do you mean by beauty?’ In the Grosvenor GalleryIn our ‘mediæval’ dresses, in our rapt and utterly
Fashionable gazes, we cannot touch
The isinglass wall of these
Damned unprofitable lives. What it is
That wrecks us—
I was lying
In the garden, up against the barrier
The mandragora were twined like thin fingers.
Sometimes I pose when no-one is there.
Please God I am a creature of habit and well-fed. A puzzle
Like a door in a hedge that is made of hedge, inscrutable.
What it is that is wrong in me—
When one glove in a pair is turned inside-out
It becomes the same as the other one, but with the seams exposed.
Nobody wants to see that.
Here is a conjuror’s trick:
I the disappearing girl. Look again and I turn up back in the box,
Same as before. I have not got anywhere.
Why am I, why am I caught
In the hinge of this world and it presses me, where was the wrong turn
Taken took me to the middle of the maze and gave
Me this head, these hands, this beast’s face?
© 2005, Jane Yeh
From: Marabou
Publisher: Carcanet, Manchester
From: Marabou
Publisher: Carcanet, Manchester
Jane Yeh
(United States of America, 1971)
With just two collections, Jane Yeh has established herself in the UK poetry world as an assured, witty, linguistically adept magpie. Taking her subjects from almost anywhere, her poems explore what identity means in a world of appearances. Paintings, robots, animals – even the owl who was chosen to play the owl in the Harry Potter movie – show us facets of ourselves.
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The Pre-Raphaelites
‘What do you mean by beauty?’ In the Grosvenor GalleryIn our ‘mediæval’ dresses, in our rapt and utterly
Fashionable gazes, we cannot touch
The isinglass wall of these
Damned unprofitable lives. What it is
That wrecks us—
I was lying
In the garden, up against the barrier
The mandragora were twined like thin fingers.
Sometimes I pose when no-one is there.
Please God I am a creature of habit and well-fed. A puzzle
Like a door in a hedge that is made of hedge, inscrutable.
What it is that is wrong in me—
When one glove in a pair is turned inside-out
It becomes the same as the other one, but with the seams exposed.
Nobody wants to see that.
Here is a conjuror’s trick:
I the disappearing girl. Look again and I turn up back in the box,
Same as before. I have not got anywhere.
Why am I, why am I caught
In the hinge of this world and it presses me, where was the wrong turn
Taken took me to the middle of the maze and gave
Me this head, these hands, this beast’s face?
From: Marabou
The Pre-Raphaelites
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