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Joanna
Boulter (1942 - 2019)
see
Vane Women Press, tribute
to Joanna, by
Annie Wright
poems
and biography as last provided by Joanna:
from
Twenty Four Preludes & Fugues on Dmitri Shostakovich,
2006,
Arc Publications, ISBN 1-904614-34-5
(Shortlisted
for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2007)
Mirror Fugue
The truly-dead are
those that are forgot,
and
a man without a memory’s a dead man.
He
will tell you everything he can.
Friends,
relatives, acquaintances, the never-met—
their
fates still bruise him. Listen:
the
slow drips of tears, of heartbreak,
freeze
and refreeze. His grief is glazed
as
Leningrad’s winter waterways
deepen,
deepen by reflection
till
the ice is far too thick to crack.
He
sees their faces through his frozen tears
and
finds himself mirrored with them.
You
want him to sing under this ice?
today
he has only the one theme.
*
Today
I have only one theme.
You
want me to sing under this ice
and
find myself, mirrored with them?
I
see their faces through my frozen tears
(this
ice which is far too thick to crack)
deepened,
deepened by reflection,
as
Leningrad’s winter waterways
freeze
and refreeze. My grief is glazed
in
the slow drip of tears, of heartbreak.
Their
fates bruise me still. Listen,
friends,
relatives, acquaintances, the never-met,
I
will tell you everything I can,
for
a man without a memory’s a dead man.
Truly,
the dead are those that are forgot.
Joanna Boulter
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