Numbers

"I get magic
     (sometimes I get more
        than I bargain for)

but I don’t get
     numbers.

Numbers do worse
than humiliate
     or elude me

they don’t add up.

I am no algebra tart
     ravished
by the meretricious music
      of the spheres.

My eyes and nose never streamed   with incontinent ecstasy     through geometry classes as my disastrous triangles     collapsed in a cacophony         around me. Perhaps it’s a failing           to grasp              or even want the utterly perfect number         burning through my retina like the utterly perfect  morning. Instead I peer         with nauseating vertigo into the deep dark pitch         of numbers like an exhausted mammoth         dangerously tottering             on the edge                of a bottomless mystery."

Written by Dorothy Porter.

the story of Lille

He went to sea for the day
He wanted to know what to say
When he's asked what he'd done
In the past to someone
That he loves endlessly
Now she's gone, so is he

I went to war every morning
I lost my way but now I'm following
What you said in my arms
What I read in the charms
That I love durably
Now it's dead and gone and I am free

I went to sleep for the daytime
I shut my eyes to the sunshine
Turned my head away from the noise
Bruise and drip decay of childish toys
That I loved arguably
All our labouring gone to seed

Went out to play for the evening
We wanted to hold onto the feeling
On the stretch in the sun
And our breathlessness as we run
To the beach endlessly
As the sun creeps up on the sea

-Lisa Hannigan