Juliette Rossant
Two Poems
Change the Weather
The dampness of the world crawls in,
Miserable beast,
Hard underbelly, soft skull, brittle skin and teeth and hair.
Easy to kill such a thing?
Easier to crawl out from where it came and leave
The destruction behind.
Absolute as wind is unforgiving,
What to wish for that is impossible now
That all things are possible?
A change in weather by vote?
A skill in moving something that cannot be tied up in a bag
Or boxed or thrown by the swift kick of a horse uphill.
Where could you find such strength nowadays,
When strength is squandered on old men and wicked dreams?
About the hill that is a stand-in for history,
And the horse that guards the future,
And the weather that stoops and bridles the effort to change
What can be,
Are a pen, paper and discarded glasses,
And the rain that washes anything I write away.
Bring me inside, shelter my wish,
while the last raindrops fall away.
Pandemic
What can a poet say to a pandemic?
Stern-faced, arm raised, and shouting
The poet aims a pen.
This thick knot of paper thrown hard at the wall, bounces off the table, ends up on the floor
Covered in pandemic.
Trawling through the dictionary
The poet searches for synonyms
Of fear, of sickness, of death.
Gazing out the window,
Coughing and wiping hands like
The clouds spreading rain on rock and treetops in a far-off mountain chain,
Approaching the city,
The rain comes down as a fever rises.
Unable to move fingers and hands,
Unable to shift body or mind,
The poet dwells on lost lines,
Counting how many written and how many forgotten.
Juliette Rossant is the author of Super Chef: The Making of the Great Modern Restaurant Empires (Simon & Schuster, 2004). Her poems have appeared in Extensions and the Stonefence Review.
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