Five Poets at the Fruitmarket - Tom Chivers

‘Petrus’ and other poems by Tom Chivers

 

PETRUS

How can I begin to speak of change, my love,

  who lives in the smallest of time.

We cannot see beyond the next financial year.

  I have no recollection of an iceberg,

though I do recall the plastic bag discarded on the lawn

  seen through a window as we tried to speak of change

or how we might begin. Its shape was not unlike an iceberg’s.

  For frosty things I say a prayer like a lock.

 

                                          – Tom Chivers

 

Tom Chivers is reading with Isobel Dixon, Claire Crowther, Andrew Philip and Rob A. Mackenzie on Wednesday 19 August at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 8-10pm. More details here.