Templar Poetry

Waiting to Burn

Angela Cleland

ISBN-13 978-0-9550023-6-6

PB £3.00

This pamphlet is one of the three winning submissions to the 2006 Templar Poetry Pamphlet Competition.

ZENO'S PHILOSOPHY

'Before the clock bell can strike the hour,
the little hand must make the journey
half way to the hour marker, that is,
to the mid-point of now and the hour,
but first, it must move half this distance,
which, in turn, it must first travel half of,
and so on, ad infinitum,' I tell
my lover's eyelids as the sky lightens.
'Infinitely small, and infinitely
numerous. No thing, no clock hand can move
fast enough to outrun these divisions.'
She wakes, has dreamt a tortoise was racing
Achilles. I kiss her sleep-limp neck and
say nothing. If I do not let her know
that this minute is ours forever, she
will love me as if the dawn approaches.