Poem
Jane Draycott
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Anyone who wanted to could leave, could gathershivering on the south side of the river,
labelled and provided for with socks and sweaters
and a little cash. We walked across the water
in our thousands and left behind for ever
all that was great: the monuments and sewers,
cathedrals, theatres, mothers, lovers, brothers
as the flames licked at the city’s raging heart.
Faced with the prospect of living forever,
we headed for the country lanes together,
imagining the parties de campagne among the clover
and the stories each would tell the others
on the way. We had left behind for ever
all that we had loved. It was a start.
© 2009, Jane Draycott
From: www.coffeehousepoetry.org/poems
Publisher: Coffee House Poetry, London
From: www.coffeehousepoetry.org/poems
Publisher: Coffee House Poetry, London
Jane Draycott
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1954)
Jane Draycott was born in 1954 and studied at King’s College, London, and then Bristol University, where she studied for a postgraduate degree in Medieval English Literature. She is a TS Eliot Prize shortlisted poet, and has been nominated for the Forward Prize three times. Draycott won the Keats-Shelley prize in 2002, and in 2004 she was named as a Next Generation Poet. The Poetry Book Society...
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Poems of Jane Draycott
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Anyone who wanted to could leave, could gathershivering on the south side of the river,
labelled and provided for with socks and sweaters
and a little cash. We walked across the water
in our thousands and left behind for ever
all that was great: the monuments and sewers,
cathedrals, theatres, mothers, lovers, brothers
as the flames licked at the city’s raging heart.
Faced with the prospect of living forever,
we headed for the country lanes together,
imagining the parties de campagne among the clover
and the stories each would tell the others
on the way. We had left behind for ever
all that we had loved. It was a start.
From: www.coffeehousepoetry.org/poems
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