Poetry by George Szirtes

ABACUS
 
Listen to the rain
counting out your works and days
on its abacus.
 
How neatly it plots
each hour. How precise it is!
Set the clock by it,
 
there is still time. Rain
will leave you tender margins
to scrawl your name in.
 
 
 
A MYRIAD SHARDS
 
 
In the land of a myriad shards
there is a word that glistens.
It is the plain tongue explaining
plainness to itself,
slowly, deliberately, as fully as it can.
 
But what it loves, it loves: it...