The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

D.H.W. Grubb

Why Some Men Cannot Remember The Colour Of Eyes

Men are really listening all the time.
Their wives see them staring at the trees,
rivers, small sections of the garden, even sheds.
This is because the stars reside there, the beginnings of days,
the immense moments in the lives of insects, Leonardo assembling a kite in his mind.
Of course they work to conceal this, hiding behind agendas
and computers and sports results and men’s magazines and big boy stuff, the serious equipment and the technical.
They can see beyond the colour of eyes mosaics of minds
that surpass words and even memory itself. The miracle of life can be encountered in a card game, on the lake’s surface,
in the second bottle of wine, in the recollection of the tree house
in a garden that no longer exists. Thus bikes and cars and constantly
purchasing the same shirt, thus that moment before the new
joke is told, thus terrible ties and bird’s eggs and staring through
the immediate as if their dead fathers had just called to them.

D.H.W Grubb has published novels and non fiction as well as many collections of poetry. He has reviewed for the TES, edited anthologies and edited an educational journal. His most recent poetry collection is published by Stride, ’The Memory of Rooms’, selected and new poems. He has two poetry collections due in 2003 and is currently working on a new novel, ’The Colour Bird’.