I S S U E 7
‘Adlestrop Storm’ by Nuzhat Bukhari, Canon 50D digital camera
This poem will appear in Companions of His Thoughts More Green: Quatercentenary Poems for Andrew Marvell; edited by David Wheatley and published by Broken Sleep Books.
Nuzhat Bukhari
English Pastoral
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
—Andrew Marvell
—unseasonable storm’s
mustered
axe of air
Wood powdering,
brittle as
ancestral lace
Gored in its core-stump
a rusted
spike
Hung-out bare
like a cuspid tooth
in a carious mouth
Time crept centuries
circling
an iron I
I
stroke it, lightly:
my diabolic amulet
A tree’s corralled vigil:
the abrupt
amputee’s fate.
I can’t cull
your orphaned
shadows
The green
hallucinations
of history are still yours to reap—
Nuzhat Bukhari’s latest book is Brilliant Corners (CB editions, 2021).