Poem
Esther Morgan
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Far above our heads their skeletal framesare engaged in a serious enterprise
swinging their payloads of concrete and steel
through a blue where the future is rising,
glittering and sheer.
Just looking up makes you dizzy –
the scale of their disinterested purpose
as they lift our dreams clear of the world
with heart-breaking ease.
Imagine, then, waking at first light,
an east wind singing through the ribs,
the city you’ve lived all your life
spread out at your feet,
shrunk to the size of a child’s Lego bricks
from which, the manufacturers claim,
you can make anything, anything.
© 2014, Esther Morgan
Esther Morgan
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1970)
Esther Morgan is the author of three books of poetry, of which the third, Grace, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize in 2011. Her poetry is subtle, quiet, delicately paced. Concerned with absences, small moments, things we barely register, her poems creep back up on the reader with lingering resonances.
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Poems of Esther Morgan
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CRANES
Far above our heads their skeletal framesare engaged in a serious enterprise
swinging their payloads of concrete and steel
through a blue where the future is rising,
glittering and sheer.
Just looking up makes you dizzy –
the scale of their disinterested purpose
as they lift our dreams clear of the world
with heart-breaking ease.
Imagine, then, waking at first light,
an east wind singing through the ribs,
the city you’ve lived all your life
spread out at your feet,
shrunk to the size of a child’s Lego bricks
from which, the manufacturers claim,
you can make anything, anything.
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