Poetry Bookshop Online

Poem of the Week

In the wake of the sad and untimely passing of R F Langley, one of Britain's most startling and original poets, we are proud to be able to publish After the Funeral, from his remarkable last collection, The Face of It.













After the Funeral


In the Ceramic Gallery. No train
till half past five. Yellow.

No amber. A hornet
would be something from another poem,
eager for nectar. We

fleer with yellow leaves. A
row of white bowls that make
mouths at it, months of it,
moon after moon. Colder
and rimmed with copper. In

the Ceramic Gallery, the yellow
October plane tree leaves in Gordon Square.
Nothing slabbered about Pauline's death. Some
details will rustle about or hump it
and call it a sixpenny jug. Think it
as leaves. Think it as bowls. It's a question

of leaves at the top of
their swell, which speak out in
a screed round the scope of
themselves, to die down in
the bowl. Stop. So that they
settle. Or stump up at
once. A hornet could bring
a formidable hum
to the poem. It's the
right time of year. There were
none at the Hampstead Free
Hospital. Nor here. Give

some mind to an empty dish. How, in the
Ceramic Gallery, metal lips fit.
Her passport photograph looks like the moon
in a tight woollen hat. She had given
her money away. Her
stare will say nothing of
that. I forget what is
left of the leaves. But it's
a knuckle keeps rapping
the bowl, so that it rings.
So that it rings and rings.