Strophe
Xerxes is flexing his muscles
fears flit like a scatter-cloud
of pigeons above the graveyards,
the dead are rolling in their plots
though it’s far from the zombie
apocalypse any of us foresaw.
Drizzle clings to the tips of bare twigs
the red beck winds down Rift Woods
sea fret eats the cliffs and all
known horizons, women swarm
through the streets of many cities.
It is the two faced month although
both directions cover up their eyes
and a tyrant has taken the throne.
Bob Beagrie is a poet and playwright from Middlesbrough and a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Teesside University. He has published several full collections and pamphlets of poetry, most recently Leasungspell (Smokestack, 2016) and Nobody (Hunting Raven Press, 2017). His work has been translated into Finnish, Estonian, Dutch, Danish, Urdu, Russian and Spanish.
