Eyewear is very glad to feature British poet John McCullough (pictured) this sunny London Friday, as The Selecter plays. His poetry has appeared in publications
including London Magazine, The Guardian, The Rialto, Poetry London
and Magma. He teaches creative writing at the Open
University and the University of Sussex.
His first collection is The Frost Fairs (Salt, 2011). He's one of the best of the young generation.
Known
Light
Now
you’re crossing that ocean, I have to confess
I’ve
rather warmed to this shed where nothing is yours,
where
your father consulted a sacred Bunsen flame.
Chipped
oak, a gas tap, scores of powdered specimens –
the
perfect stage for resurrecting my ‘A’ Level Chemistry.
I
remember this much: each metal has a secret,
unchangeable
colour. A Nichrome wire dipped
in
compounds, then in fire, bares their truer shades.
It’s
a bit like those stars, the ones you rehearsed
on
the pebbles at Kemp Town: the blood
in
Betelgeuse, Rigel’s constant blue – they show
only
with a telescope’s fiercer attention.
You
have to inspire electrons if
you want to unveil
calcium’s
brick red, barium’s green,
the
strange lilac which simply means potassium.
Loyal
friends, they return now with the tiniest prod,
make
me smug as an alchemist,
impatient
for knowledge of the lone unlabelled jar.
Reveal
yourself, sweet familiar, I whisper to glass
before
I’m blinded by the white heat
of
a magnesium heart.
poem by John McCullough; reprinted with permission of the poet, from The Frost Fairs.
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