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CLOSE SEASON

They say it smells of dead holidays.
I say it always did.  And out of season
was never the time to connect anything
with anything here, where you can only
wonder at the sea in all the shades
of grey on Richter’s palette, wonder
where the ice-cream vendors go
and if the deckchair man can really
hibernate in his cave beneath the cliff,
with his chairs, his memories of summer.

On the pier a salt breeze ruffles
a scrap of gaudy poster,  and offshore,
somewhere close, a ship’s bell tolls
for something gone, for some thing .

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Jeremy Page has edited The Frogmore Papers since 1983.  His short stories have been published in magazines like Ambit, Citizen 32 and The Interpreter’s House, and he is the author of several collections of poems, most recently In and Out of the Dark Wood (HappenStance, 2010).  His work has been translated into German and Romanian, and a selection of his poems was recently broadcast on Radio Romania Cultural in English and Romanian.  His own translations of Catullus are published by Ashley Press as The Cost of All Desire.  His play Loving Psyche was staged in Bremen in 2010.

Publications:

The Cost of All Desire: after Catullus (Ashley Press, 2011) available through good bookshops, from Skylark in Lewes, or by post (£5.00) from: The Frogmore Press, 21 Mildmay Road, Lewes BN7 1PJ.

In and Out of the Dark Wood (HappenStance Press, 2010) available from HappenStance (or through good bookshops)

The Alternative Version (Frogmore Press, 2001) available through good bookshops, from Skylark in Lewes, or by post (£4.95) from: The Frogmore Press, 21 Mildmay Road, Lewes BN7 1PJ.

Secret Dormitories (Crabflower Pamphlets, 1993) out of print

Bliss (Crabflower Pamphlets, 1989) out of print