Charm
Enough of scorch, scald, sore- and rawness.
Sometimes flesh longs for eclipse.
Mesh over mesh, compact me with cool plaster.
Swaddling clothes. Dry crust. Sarcophagus.
A scratch, a bramble rip… a mere sly snick
from a page of your book can open you,
its turn to read you, to the wordless quick.
The shock of pink, upwelling. Yet the cry
is there before it, years before: child
stares at the hurt finger, almost not part
of himself, and his mouth is a quivering
O. Make it better… Or now,
stunned by the all-over blow that age is,
with our medicines losing their grip
on the old ills, old words… How long
before ague, grippe, pox, bloody flux and
Make it better, we’ll cry. Lay a cool
charm, tree words, to our stripped flesh
leaf by leaf as if sap could transfuse
to our veins. And when the cocoon cracks,
plaster peels off, will we come shivering
back into light, in skin too pale, then
Shade us, we’ll say, and for the first
time listen when the forest whispers back?
Philip Gross’ Thirteenth Angel (Bloodaxe, 2022) was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, which he previously won in 2009. www.philipgross.co.uk The Shores of Vaikus, a creative re-inhabiting of Estonia, his refugee father’s birthplace, was published by Bloodaxe in November: www.bloodaxebooks.com