Alison Croggon Poems

CHORUS There is nothing stranger than man.
As if he were a storm
he strides through the waves
of the winter seas
...

great aunts are very swallowing and dangerous
they exist all their lives in broughams and monocles
sometimes they recite poetry to frighten you
I have spent whole months trembling for their assignations
...

There’s never been an excuse, you always knew
it was easier to ignore, to drown this hollowing voice
in cascades of inertia. Their fluid columns
...

I am a queen at a high window
a black sail stands
at exactly the same distance
as always
...

We were woken too early, before the moths had died in the streets,
when buds had barely hardened in the frost, when stars are hurtful
and famished. They took us through gardens and past the halls
...

A dog ran from the whistle a child tugged his mother’s skirt
the dog skittered through leaves of rain a bird cowered the child chased the bird
...

This hand was the flower on your mother’s breast
rooted in the dark river
and it was the crucible
in which the sunlight hardened to a crystal
...

You always spoke for me
so how could I name
what happened later
...

Cassandra: Useless; there is no god of healing in this story.
Agamemnon, Aeschylus
...

Cursed by God,
Grendel walked out of the moors,
over the mist-slopes. He planned to snatch
a man from the mead-hall. Onwards he slunk
...