Man and Wife
On days like this,
her sorrows seem
elective: purest
gesture, like
the fur trim on the stole
a queen wears
for her sister's
execution;
while somewhere
in the back-room of the year,
the Cathar in me
dreams of honeydew,
a Boy's Own tale
of how things might have been
before the cold set in: a last
Magnificat,
laid bare
to catch the sun.
John Burnside's collections include The Hoop (1988); The Light Trap (2002); The Good Neighbour (2005); Gift Songs (2007); and Black Cat Bone (2011), which won both the Forward Prize for Poetry and the T.S. Eliot Prize. In 2008, Burnside received the Cholmondeley Award. His prose works include the collection of short stories Burning Elvis (2000), as well as several novels and memoirs. The Devil’s Footprints (2007) was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and A Summer of Drowning (2011) was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award. A former writer-in-residence at Dundee University, he currently teaches at the University of St. Andrews.