Poems for Placentia

by Jane Kingshill

Allure.  The Painter's Song Moon let me put you under my pillow there to reassemble that company of fellow- conspirators.  It was all a dark doorway exercise.  Passwords.  Sword play.  One call too shrill perhaps as the night-watch went by.  Soundless and speedy the blow.  "Bleed as she may, I need that bright, best colour" says the canvas getting dressed.

The Heart of a Heartless Flower Flowers are poppies, are War. Flowers are roses, are Politics. Flowers are St Valentine. Mix and match.  The well where they grow has a dead horse in it.  Are they living who drank there?  Tell me, Mars.  Split on him, Venus.  A scarlet Pimpernel gets by, by going small. A scarlet Admiral Flies off.  The star Looks like a button-hole so far Away.  Slowly rose petals fall.

Valley of Blood Yes these are they whom dusk forsakes To stare you down through rifts of further pallor.  Soft, sweet, sticky.  Mother mother what's this stuff that makes a noise like strawberry Jam? it takes a lot of beating, takes spoonfuls of New Jerusalem so play sad fountains.  Too much star afire is what these ashes say.

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