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2 July 2024

The NS Poem: To the Pavement

A new poem by Mark Granier.

By Mark Granier

Great welcome mat
bled on, pissed on, dressed up

in the rain-slicked dark’s lurid
dabble of lights, or midsummer’s

long-legged shadow-puppetry — 
treadmill, hard mattress, 

you take the daily weight of us
and our absence: dawn cities

littered with gulls, blue light 
leaking like Revelation, the slow 

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mechanised whine of road cleaners 
gathering in the sheaves —

Mark Granier’s “Ghostlight: New & Selected Poems” is published by Salmon Poetry

[See more: The NS Poem: Civet de Cerf]

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This article appears in the 02 Jul 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Labour’s Britain