Book spine poem: Grand Central Station

A new (and characteristically overdue) bookmash! Also known as a book spine poem. Here goes.

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Grand Central Station

By Grand Central Station
I sat down and wept:
Spill, simmer,
Falter, wither,
A Belfast woman a far cry
from Kensington.

The leaves on grey,
The introvert’s way,
The woman who talked
to herself:
If you leave me,
Can I come too?

The joke’s over –
The song is you.

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When without = unless

In A. L. Barker’s darkly comic novel John Brown’s Body (1965) there is a use of the word without that’s fairly unusual nowadays:

She moaned, curling deeper into the dark. Nothing was finished or forgettable. Jack said that everyone went off balance sometime – at spiders or red rags or, in his case, temperance hotels. But this thing of hers was so almighty that she would have prayed to it if it would have done any good, asked to be let off a little, excused just enough to make it endurable. Painlessness she did not expect, not without she died and was born another person, but a little less cruelty, a grain of consciousness – the final humiliation was in not knowing herself – this she would have begged and prayed for if she thought anyone or anything was listening. [my underlines]

Book spine poem: Trespass in a Strange Room

A new book spine poem, aka bookmash, this one a mixture of recent reads and newly acquired to-be-reads. (Click to enlarge the photo.)

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Trespass in a Strange Room

Trespass in a strange room –
Criminal shadows, a severed head,
John Brown’s body waiting for an angel,
Destination: morgue!

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