Cardiff International Poetry Competition

 Runner-up - Jane Kirwan

Jane Kirwan spends most of her time in the depths of the Czech countryside. She studied in London, getting degrees first in Dentistry and later, English literature. She’s lived mainly in London but has worked in Nigeria and for the last ten years has been idle in the Czech Republic. Jane’s poetry collection Stealing the Eiffel Tower was published in 1997 and The Man Who Sold Mirrors, for which she won an Arts Council Writers Award, came out in 2003. Both collections were published by Rockingham Press, who will also bring out Second Exile (written with Ales Machacek) in September 2010.

Lásko

The moss is growing up to the gate
please call me if you are coming. I will go to the bridge
and meet you. I could walk to Ujezdec
search for crystals in the ditch on the way to the quarry

but might miss you.
I could lie in the hammock, try to read
not see dust from the car as you pass the brickworks
or clear out dried hives from the shed

how would I know where to put them
if you need them
or weed the basil in your salad garden
what if I pull out your seedlings?
I should keep deer away from shoots of horse-chestnut
we took from your grandfather's grave in Olšany

or go back to the lake where we first met.
You might not come, not swim towards me
spouting water like a porpoise, drenching me
with elder-petals; might have joined a boat to Pec
met up with friends, be drinking Pilsner in a pub

have forgotten all about me.
I can see skin on toadstools harden, split
azalea buds loosen and open.

The gate is stiff, the metal bucket that props it shut
stuck into mud. You went off in a rush, packing
papers and books, cries of children in the yard
the sky quite grey. Trees were luminous those days
the silver birch wept when you left.

In the city you might have been woken at dawn
and taken to Bartolom?jská.
I will go to the bridge and wait for you.