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Currajah (news & notes)

 

JAL NICHOLL

 

         Frieze

 

Your old shoes have nothing to say

their tongues in hollow heads – but you decided

to give them one more day

 

in the basement where pages

uncut a century and longer

keep silent. Then go and crowd

 

abreast with the others

their eyes facing the same way

as your toes, in their own sweat and darkness

 

straining to see the show. Where then

but to the fortune-teller

whose uncanny knowledge amazes you

 

when she invokes your fears by name;

– not that her predictions ever

come true, but her dictum

 

that one who is damned on earth has eternal life

is certain, and you take it home.