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# Before light comes: three poems
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/article-1972jsp/
- Published: 2004-06-23T23:06:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-17T11:53:01.000Z
- Author: Pele Cox
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:17, #ImagesUploaded

**Lines**

I

I am nature’s  

church dew’s rest  

flight’s grave  

a wide white eye  

and hell for the butterfly.

II

Stare at the delicate, antique eye

draw back

to original frosts

the web’s dew-poised

angular cling

and balancing act.

An adult’s brightened eye, raised hand,

Our broken walks, wintertime

At the holly

Such skeletal fallings.

III

Mine the insecticide

mine the bed

and this the line

the captured wing has read.

The auspicious eye, Madhubani, India, Dhirendra Jha

**Afterwards,**

He says  
“it would be good  
to find a woman as bright  
as me.”  
She uncurls, thinks;  
not unlike burial  
lying here  
before light comes.

The room so black  
a charcoal smear  
their limbs bare.  
Him, her,  
ash, bone  
a cigarette  
smoking out

and where on earth  
to go from here.

![afterwards](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/80/3f804bea-4b2d-4ddf-9ff0-6ec7d0afa5fa/content/images/2026/04/afterwards_klimt_detail_565_A06wg2a-1776425902923.jpg)

afterwards

Goldfish (detail), Gustav Klimt, 1901-2

**A Pair Of Whales’ Fin Earrings**

No tail, no head to speak of,  
dismemberment converses  
here,

in this severed fin jammed  
straight through. Little harpoon  
close as a thought

you hang at my lobe  
like an echo.  
Were there whales

at Lilliput  
did they send two here  
to score this ocean and

drift  
my ears’ dark avenue  
so I wouldn’t forget you.

Nude, East Sussex, Bill Brandt, 1957