When day breaks we will be off

Posted on: 21 February 2017 by James Byrne in Posts

A poem by James Byrne.

That the stars could be tissue paper

or, better, coated in sugar, she says,

and points, blind, a bony forefinger

to the nowhere sky of Europe; place

displacing her, a woman suppliant,

as in Aeschylus, counting on familiars

like friendliness. Why is it in this land

they look at me like we are strangers?