Poem: Games Against Time

Childhood's grace. How to keep its spirit alive. A poem on Leonora Carrington's The Hour of the Angelus.

Outside these walls,

Where you dance and play,

A strange audience

Rises around you.

Ignore them! Can’t. 

So below your skirts,

Those rustling petticoats,

The dust of quick footsteps

Veil their curious looks.

To dance the runes

Is to keep them still;

You confuse them

With childish nonsense.

Time shrinks the wall.

The eyes grow like moons,

Night no longer

Safe from their glance.

The faster you go;

The higher they rise,

Now leaning over that wall.

‘Oh no don’t!’

One game left to play,

As they tower about you.

Hide and seek

In spaces no shadows fall.

Nowhere left to hide.