2018 brought three collections of poetry from Simon Smith: Day In, Day Out (Parlor Press), The Books of Catullus (Carcanet) and Some Municipal Love Poems (Muscaliet). His third book of poems, Mercury (Salt Publications), was long-listed for the Costa Prize in 2007, and a selected poems, More Flowers Than You Could Possibly Carry, appeared from Shearsman Books in 2016. Simon Smith is Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Kent, was a Hawthornden Writing Fellow in 2009, and a judge of the National Poetry Prize in 2004. From 1991-2007 he worked as a librarian at The Poetry Library in London.
TO THE FLAG
is the ghost in the narrative
the Holy Grail is one of these
& grows like a virus
like echoes
for no turning back
& real as a cup of tap water
as real as naming a form
of recollection
with the accuracy of care & grace
& what is good for the heart
of human dust
the dawn blue still night
with no incidents to report
from the first the swallows flit & chatter
force-field / constellation / star
from the first resist attention
flashback as headlights
the dark floating out there
haunted by the Real
suspended
all thinking done
as closing points
lean towards consequence
the bluer skies are now
& dreaming hard
of folded possibilities
things things things the wreckage
paying with the sentence
its currency
wrapped up in the flag
all the dead
in its recoil
& God is an it
as the present tense
adds up to simple dissent
field guide / drums / mouthings
& to forget
what to see exit
emptied as an envelope
of nothing left but to follow
hollowed away
of not quite yet
to hold back refuse the gap
or the route back
to the loved ones who only sit it out
in sorrow & loose ends
with the freedom to walk the streets
& the freedom to walk away
to wait up for the return
an exhalation an ‘ah’
the ghost is a kind of cold angel
to see what is being done with
& fits like a bent key
when there’s no more honey in the world
a full-moon tracking right
& what is good for the hurt
the personal song that breathes the flag of disobedience
lets all the air & light in
