Prescription
I’m recommending Heartsease to still
the tear that rolls,
the brain that churns,
the springing cry in the chest that waits
as if in ambush.
If the Furies have your scent
you must need mercy –
that strain of mercy that Athena metes out
with her scales, her grey eyes.
Even Helen stirred Heartsease in her wine
with a grimy finger,
when she saw the damage done:
how hell had dawned within her arms.
Her wan face regained its charm.
Look how it comes, clean,
a blister-pack of swan’s eggs;
new moons.
You should take it.
Take it.
* Prescription appears in Clare Pollard's fourth Bloodaxe Books collection The Changeling, forthcoming at the end of May. She is an editor for Magma and co-editor, with James Byrne, of the anthology Voice Recognition: 21 poets for the 21st century (Bloodaxe Books, 2009).
