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Love and a Life

is a sequence of fifty poems Edwin Morgan wrote from September to November 2002; it was published by Mariscat Press, Glasgow, in 2003. 'Love', one of the poems from this sequence, has recently been included in the list of The Best Twenty Scottish Poems 2003-2004. (See website of the Scottish Poetry Library www.spl.org.uk)

Listen to Edwin Morgan reading 'Desire' from Love and a Life :

DESIRE

It is a power, it is a mystery, it is a fate,
            but above all it is a power.
The jaws of Venus will not let go their prey.
            Hour after hour
They sink deeper, and the victim even smiles
            to see the spreading flower
Of blood, as it springs from those scary
threshings of life. Don't cower,
Don't wince! It's only a nightmare, it's only
            a movie, it's only imaginary Phaedra shrieking
            from her tower.
                        'Only, only' you cry?
                        What do you want to deny?
Are you trying to tell us all these flecks of
            blood are not from something struggling to
            be born? You think it's like the passing
            sting of some damned April shower?

Edwin Morgan