The 1997 collection from Manchester poet John Marks. He was a part-time tutor for the Open University specializing in 18th cent. European literature and 19th cent. British religious history.

ISBN 0 903610 20 5

SHELLEY

Low-slung August sun shadows stonework into the 
 deeper shadow lands — 
 phantoms adrift on the wide Sargasso sea — 
 and so unruffled, these lawns, 
 and all this frumpery.

So much then has time 
and its opposite 
done for me.

It was along these lines that we walked, it was 
 beneath these swaying poplars we kissed; 
 and now memory passes strange lines of time over me.

All, all I can think of 
 in your marbled hand so small and cold in mine, 
 so much space, so little time —

and, as I board the National Express coach to Manchester 
 and see the poplar trees sway 
 and shift the shadows of that day away, 
 I hear your voice 
 whispering to me 
 of the strangeness that awaits me 
 in the darkness of the wide Sargasso sea.