I tell you, but first,

if you’re hungry,

have a snack on one

of those quasars,

before you dream again

of the tumble

through air to

the stone landing,

fireworks the last

thing you hear.

Pascale Petit

Devil at the End of Love

Surprised at the birth of stars,

passions built on noble gases,

the Devil objects. An Angel comes

full of light and carbon compounds

to chase him off with promise,

possibility lit in a single word.

Devil says WIE HEIßT DAS WORT?

and the Angel laughs into infinity.

‘Do you not know the only Word?

the Word that wings joyfully

through the universe? The Word

that expiates all guilt, the eternal

Word?’ Now is the time for violins,

morsing out in bold metallic bursts

as hands are held, silences broken.

Devil says WIE HEIßT DAS WORT

and there is a solid flash of horizon,

as hearts explode in unending

strokes, a complete understanding

of ourselves. Joy. Flashes of light.

The singular reality tonight:

\IIIIIIII/

– L I E B E –

/IIIIIIII\

Chrissy Williams

The Hubble Space Telescope before repair

The way they tell it

All the stars have wings

The sky so full of wings

There is no sky

And just for a moment

You forget

The error and the crimped

Paths of light

And you see it

The immense migration

And you hear the rush

The beating

Rebecca Elson

Avowal

Once and for all, I go my chosen way,

Once and for all, neglect to interfere.

Upon the very forehead of the day

I set my seal, and dare to persevere

In making pit and pinnacle my own,

In staying – at what cost! – natively free;

In meeting, unmolested and alone,

What is, and was, and presently will be.

Through this ungovernable air between the dark

Of comets’ paths, I cut a glittering arc,

Dying as I was born, an original spark,

Orbitless, golden, answering to none,

Conditioned in myself, ended, begun

And ended, with the shrivelling of the sun.

Virginia Moore

‘It’s the sea I want’ – Voyages by Verse

It isn’t usually girls, in the old stories, who run away to sea. But who can smell the salt, or taste the spray, and not long to set sail? We need new stories. This chapter begins on the seashore, with Moya Cannon’s tethered boats straining, as we do, at their moorings. We plunge into the waves or board boats to strike out for destinations unknown, for places rich and strange. There is something about the sea that whispers or roars at us, as Edith Södergran writes, that ‘the saga can happen, even to you’.

Sabrina Mahfouz and Emma Lazarus, writing over a century apart, also remind us of ‘the homeless, the tempest-tost’, and the hope that those fleeing across the waves will find freedom and a safe harbour where they make land.

Hunter’s Moon

There are perhaps no accidents,

no coincidences.

When we stumble against people, books, rare moments out

of time,

these are illuminations –