<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
An Ancient Settlement<\/strong><\/p>\n This is a true story, though I cannot believe it now. That first day, I did not mind. For when we stopped that first late afternoon, And so later, when he turned to face me, Liz Lefroy<\/strong> won the 2011 Roy Fisher Prize with her first pamphlet, Pretending the Weather<\/em>. Her second, The Gathering<\/em>, was published earlier in 2012, also by Long Face Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An Ancient Settlement This is a true story, though I cannot believe it now. We travelled in the black Mercedes, and maybe, like me, you\u2019ll want to know where and how. I wore a blue skirt and I wore a white blouse – this I recall because I wore them for seven days. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"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-3366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3366"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3368,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366\/revisions\/3368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWe travelled in the black Mercedes,
\nand maybe, like me, you\u2019ll want to know where and how.
\nI wore a blue skirt and I wore a white blouse –
\nthis I recall because I wore them for seven days.<\/p>\n
\nWhen we stopped off, I thought we were nowhere.
\nAnd though afterwards we got back into the car,
\nand drove to the house where I was held,
\nand though after two days I was bored,
\nand though by the fourth I\u2019d raised my fist
\nagainst his pinching of my cheek,
\nagainst his thick thigh,
\nhis thick hand resting on my blue skirt,
\nI do not regret the journey.
\nThis may surprise you.<\/p>\n
\nI turned the corner into the reddening sun.
\nBefore me lay stones, and stones on stones,
\nsome half-tumbled into low walls,
\nsome etched with chariots and geometric vines,
\nsome worked into columns supporting the sky,
\nsome lying loose and heavy in the grass.
\nThrough the lintel-less gateway of towering sphinxes
\nI saw round-breasted goddesses
\neyeing the fluting god-processions
\nfrom behind their untamed, stony hair.<\/p>\n
\nand when later still he cursed my name,
\nabove this rage I heard those ancient voices,
\nheard them rise, stride out, free and wild,
\ninto the singing grasslands of the night.<\/p>\n