Tuesday 7 April 2015

Lesley Saunders' The Walls Have Angels (Mulfran, 2014)

Some favourite passages:


...although some mornings
we wake in a past room
so familiar is the window
and soft-footed

like the look of a pearl
that we feel we are
the kind of stuff
continuously inhabited

by light and memories
of light, winter birds
falling out of the sky
more spirit than flesh....


from "Nightshirt"


...her face contemplative as glass....

from "Annunciation"


                                  The song in her head held

its wisteria note for the length of a question....

from "Music for Two Keyboards"


...and the slight sense of
          mistaken identity
each time the daughters
catch sight of their
vivid altered selves.

from "Psalms for the House"


                                             The blue

was something else: the cool of wall
against a woman's back, the linen
weight of her hem, and the light itself

               material as the jug of warm milk

in a corner.

from "Smalt"


...movements of the soul in vivacious flesh....

from "Shudder"


                                       Spoke without notes

in front of all these silences....

from "The Power of Light"


                    Comes a dancer

out of the Gloucestershire bluebell woods
blue-veiled with whatever it takes
to get to the truth.

from "Out of the Blue"


The air is suddenly bee-yellow,

peony-red, aflame:
there is more to this world than this world....

from "Enter the Dragon"


At the door the last visitor

must slough his dead skins
like a disreputable coat
and wait for the music.

from "Keepers"


You can purchase The Walls Have Angels at Waterstone's here for either home delivery or click and collect service.

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