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  • And Yet Again
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And Yet Again

Esther Phillips

Tonight I want to offer you
this moonlight cupped in a purple
flower; this chorus of crickets
holding no grudge against the day’s
dying. I want to lift the cool sweetness
of sour-grass under the night wind
and soothe the tautness in your face.
I want to tempt you away from your heroic
silence for joy that is free and foolish.
I want to weave these early stars
like a rope for you to hold
and make your way past your old
hurts, faiths crumbling like dust.
This wanting is not a nebulous thing;
it is the soul desiring its other self
where need knows no hindrance of words.

Now, only this longing, this reaching
yet again – in spite of.


Esther Phillips

from The Stone Gatherer (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2009)

Reproduced by kind permission of the publisher.

Tags:

desire gifts Love night

About this poem

This poem, representing Barbados, is part of The Written World – our collaboration with BBC radio to broadcast a poem from every single nation competing in London 2012.

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Esther Phillips

Esther Phillips holds an MFA degree in Creative Writing from the University of Miami, where she won the Alfred Boas Poetry Prize of the Academy of American Poets. She won the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Award for her collection,...
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