Latest Decanto Issue.

The current issue of Decanto is available for £3.80 inc p&p. Please refer to the Contact Us page for details of how to order

THE REVENGE OF TANTALUS

I wanted to taste the fruit of the tree
that withdrew its branches as I approached.
Each day when I passed, its branches would wink
a haunting apple to taunt hungry eyes.
And I waited forever with yearning
for what was forbidden by your forked tongue,
until the time came when autumn released
your gift, upon which I fell gratefully.

But the feel of your flesh across my lips
felt unlike the velvet I’d imagined;
and now that I held your taciturn prize,
given with indifferent calculation,
it shone without lustre. And so with a bow
I replaced the core, half-eaten, beneath
your arrogant bowers before walking
on to orchards new in search of better.

© Mike Gwynne

back to top

NEARING MONREALE

(from Sicily)

Lean cyclists slanting down, full tilt,
At the corner they slowed--
All so these running, stumbling faithful
Could sight their demigods twice.

Then straight, the long brown legs all sinew,
The furious knees,
With barely a glance aside,
For a mile and a mile
Then one more mile--
Always another mile to Monreale
(Remember? The gold-stuck temple found ...)
Where one of them must win.

One of these men will win and one man only, Selinunte girl!
At these games that broad daylight never tires of staging
In your honour--
Yours
You
Girl on the trophy, your tunic body still a lure--

But you heeded no word of mine, of any man,
Glancing elsewhere, black,
Above the echoing wall, beyond the incense fumes,
At what smiled or frowned in recognition--
Oracle.

© George Kay

back to top

THE CHARCOAL BURNER

(The Charcoal burner’s grave, in Ecclesall woods, Sheffield, is a local monument. It is on the site of a hut where he was mysteriously found dead amongst the embers, in the mid 19th century)

Fathers and sons; so much unspoken love
Such a weight to bear, a lifetimes burden.

The charcoal burner sitting on his step
Of his one roomed hut as the sun sets
His old clay pipe clenched between his teeth.
Consumption’s claimed all his boys
Until one remained who sailed the seas
To the worlds end for his country’s pleasure.

In the morning he smoothes each last grey hair
With infinite patience prepares his coal
A dull faith, almost an ache of longing
Shadows of flame dancing on his forehead
His ears prick at each unfamiliar noise
A twig cracks; a Jay breaks from the bracken.

In the evening he picks at embers
As days slip effortlessly into months
And autumn turns to winter as it must
With hypnotic mists after soft rains
He cracks the surface ice and washes
As the year turns to ashes at his feet.

Now ambiguous transience; unspoken thoughts
As landscapes slip slowly into dreamscapes
And long into the night he will absorb
The flickering lightning on distant hills
As knives on grindstone flash like fireflies
Shifting form by the furnace’s warm embrace.

Spring.
(CLOUDS SLIP ASIDE. AN AROUSING SUN SENDS VISIONS)

On sudden impulse one cool spring morning
He makes a small clay oven; his house a pyre
Then after taking whisky’s from his pot
He burns and dreams of conflagrations
His imagined self blown to stratospheres
To fall on cold waters on distant seas.
His love, at last, had wings.

© Jon Stocks

back to top

BIRD GIRL

I remember her aged seven or nine,
peering round the corner of two decades
pickle-preserved by the white canvas,
at the apex of long shadows:
her lost worlds lying between battered fences
and intense summer barefoot evenings.
 
She emerges unscathed from a fortress
of fresh cut branches, muddied on palm and knee,
flexed as she lands cat-like,
sure-footed from knotted ropes among the ivy.
I see her captive delight in the smoke swirl,
the blackened foil-wrapped potatoes
which smoked on into next morning.
 
Her centipede steps dot among flower heads,
with the bravery of snail and shell, weaving
her earth-brushed nests and castles
of garden refuge, compost-swept and
laced around tree trunks to repel intruders,
watching as twilight intensifies the colours
of throat-red accusations across the lawn.
 
Her spindle defences were never tested,
her grass songs and tribal histories never
plundered;
part fact, part fiction, she shoulders her role,
in brave bewilderment from her home knitted costume
scratchy with the creamy gull tips
of feathers collected from beach or woods.

At sunset she awaits the kitchen call,
the towelling pyjamas on the radiator
and the bright electric lights which
summon her from dream time to bed time,
from bed time to the future
into the adult strictures
of the present.

© Amy Licence

back to top

ANNA AND EMMA

Anna Karenina’s come to tea –  
        
             I’d invited Madame Bovary  
            and thought they’d get along.

    Polite nods.

    Anna’s all grace – eyes grey
        as the glitter and sting of the Baltic.
    A swirl of mournful Russian vowels
        and erotic consonants – linguistic seduction.
    Imagine her: fur swathed, in a sleigh –
        the horses clattering through snowbound streets,
            drawn by frozen billows of steam –
                and the train’s whistle blowing.

    I made a cake –
        with raspberries, blueberries and lime.  
    Red for passion, blue for grief
        and lime for the bitterness of shame.

    Anna and Emma sit on the sofa,
        refusing to look at each other.  
    Anna cuts her cake into cubes
        and, every half hour, crushes one.
    Emma, wilful child, crumbles hers,
        and chokes on the fragments of feeling.  


    Madame Bovary’s colouring is a crow
        dripping blood on snow.  
    The deepening blue of her eyes
        taught night how to fall.
    Shadowed irises, black as my pen’s scrawl,
        remind her of the inky taste of arsenic.
    Gallic boredom is as much a costume
        as this moonbeam dress she was buried in.

    We talk first of fashion;
        but Anna makes Emma feel parochial.
    Then, I try literature -
        and they finally find some common ground –
            claiming they’ve lived passion, not read it.

    I am a mistress too, I say.

    Their silence lacks sympathy –
        neither sees me as a romantic heroine.
    It must be the leggings and manic hair,
        the widening hips and unkempt laughter.
    Or perhaps it’s the rail tracks, inkily black,
        redrawn with each disaster.

© Isabella Clarke

back to top