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This poem is taken from PN Review 170, Volume 32 Number 6, July - August 2006.

Three Poems Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Global Here

What sort of weather plays across the soul?
Thought, in cold bedrooms, congeals again
smudging the window-pane. In paradox
we wrestle with the what of what-is-not
while early-woken hoons burn rubber

up and down the dove-grey street outside.
The colour of your thought has no clear name
or else it had a name and you forgot -
amethyst? mauve? lapis lazuli? -
the nether mind can often be contrary,

just like that low moving in across the bight
with a Sheep Weather Alert and scattered showers.
You battle on, take an umbrella, sing
the sweet and corny songs of adolescence.
Fortune tends to favour the south-west wind.
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