{"id":234,"date":"2011-04-23T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-04-23T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=234"},"modified":"2020-12-09T16:23:26","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T16:23:26","slug":"simon-barracloughs-easter-saturday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/simon-barracloughs-easter-saturday\/","title":{"rendered":"Simon Barraclough's Easter Saturday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Easter Saturday, Hyde Park<\/span>

Winter\u2019s piggy-backing spring, squeezing ribs<\/span>
with icy thighs, scoring her pale haunches<\/span>
with his whistling crop. Pigeons are downed<\/span>
by rat-a-tat hail, sheltering their pates<\/span>
as brittle as biscuit or Eucharist host,<\/span>
dazed from the air turning grapeshot and grey.<\/span>

It\u2019s at a loss, this apocryphal day:<\/span>
parenthesised by murder and grace,<\/span>
never knowing whether to storm or shine,<\/span>
to pitch winter into The Serpentine<\/span>
or let him beggar these bones to the ground<\/span>
and ride the year into the knacker\u2019s yard.<\/span>

So I think I\u2019ll sit it out with Peter Pan<\/span>
and see if Sunday wakes me as lost boy or man.<\/span>
 <\/p>\n


<\/span> <\/span>
*Simon Barraclough<\/span><\/a> is author of Los Alamos Mon Amour<\/span> (Salt 2008), Bonjour Tetris<\/span> (Penned in the Margins 2010) and 'Neptune Blue' (Salt, July 2011).<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Easter Saturday, Hyde ParkWinter\u2019s piggy-backing spring, squeezing ribswith icy thighs, scoring her pale hauncheswith his whistling crop. Pigeons are downedby rat-a-tat hail, sheltering their patesas brittle as biscuit or Eucharist host,dazed from the air turning grapeshot and grey.It\u2019s at a loss, this apocryphal day:parenthesised by murder and grace,never knowing whether to storm or shine,to pitch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23877,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions\/23877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}