Poem: The unwritten book

This morning I have been writing poetry, and so for a post today let me share one of my poems from my to-be-published Burning Archive collection.

The unwritten book

Your secret will die with me, never-ending tome,
without interrogation of your catechism.

Together we conspire for a life of dull ease,
Turning away from office, plastic and chatter,

To find in lazy days St Antony’s precedent –
the world can change when we withdraw from this forged world.

You demand devotion and you rarely praise –
Each effort falls into silence, succumbs to depth.

Never knowing your reader, never striking home,
Never pronouncing those words you read quietly right.

Yet you stand within me, a ruin demanding speech
To interpret interpretation in spite of

The ripples of silence that cross my bedevilled
serotonin machine. Disaster is written

In fragments, scarred by stars, in a sealed and bound text
That lies obscurely in wait for my failure.

But you will not trap me there: you will fail, not I.
The book will become a vision, broken with bread.

Jeff Rich