A Dose of Chaminade
At the end of the lawn
as you contemplate the gentle lake
and do your best to translate
the poetry of the crows,
you can hear against a small wind
the drawing-room piano.
It is playing a piece
called L’Ondine,
a piece which wears
an Edwardian bathing costume
and leaves a pool of water
on the parquet floor.
In a moment Nancy
will stand and wave at you
with one of her complicated waves
before she slips away
politely
from the French windows.
Philip Rush runs Yew Tree Press in Stroud, a small press which focuses on poetry pamphlets. His own poetry has appeared in UK, US and Irish journals, including, perhaps most recently in Obsessed with Pipework. He was in Carcanet’s New Poetries IV