SurVision Magazine
An
international online magazine that
publishes Surrealist poetry
in English.
Issue Four
DAVID MURPHY
Lady of the Marshes
My lady of the marshes spoke words after death:
vowels round and smooth, consonants sharp and clear.
I swallowed whole syllables she spoke.
The syntax of her world punctured
my brief existence with new interpretation.
She said, There is nothing –
no wave-lapped shore beneath silver moon,
no starlight beams down crystal ripples –
there is nothing.
She rolled a diphthong at my feet.
Split and torn it glinted in the gutter,
a Hope Diamond gilded with false sparkle.
I hunched down seeking honest emotion,
the truth within the gem.
She said, There is nothing –
no mountain peaks where eagles soar,
no valleys alive with animals and fish –
there is nothing.
She lost her voice, a sudden withdrawal of tongue.
A sliver of sound beckoned.
I thought I heard the trill of her "r"
in my muffled plea for mercy.
Then she spoke again.
There is nothing –
except the winding down of a life;
no spans of study and nurture and friendship,
no reams of poems learned by a heart stilled,
a voice quelled – havens of inner memory
built on decades until, quite suddenly,
no kingdom exists but this:
no parallel universe but love.
David Murphy is from Dublin, Ireland. His poetry has been published in The Poetry Bus, Stony Thursday Book, Revival, The Burning Bush, Irish Literary Review, Cyphers, The Ogham Stone, The Stinging Fly, and The Shop.
