Poetry

White House

Outside the white house the air is fresh.
No cold will come to the still interior.
From the door a raised pier parts the grasses
bending like hoops under breeze.

This walk was long and never easy.
Each single step felt like the first,
hard and tired of the level pace
I maintained without complaint.

As I took one foot to the stair
voices gathered in the high rooms.
But when I opened the keyless door
I found only my voice, still and querulous.

The wind held like caught applause.
I dreamt of a shining body of gold
and a human mask like a shield.
I did not know I would find her

alone on the pathway, smiling.
Her black dress spread over the grass
which turned about her like water,
like water turning at invisible depths,

the surface disturbed by her clear smiling,
and her legs bare where her dress had ridden,
and the grass scratching her legs,
her smiling below me like a blessed soul.

Cliff Ashcroft, Alumni Poet

Cliff Ashcroft graduated in English Literature from Sheffield with BA in 1984 and MPhil in 1989. He has published Faithful (Carcanet, 1996) and Dreaming of Still Water (Salt, 2005), from which this poem is taken.