Irish Pages LTD

Cotton BollAuthor(s): Sarah MaguireSource: Irish Pages, Vol. 2, No. 2, The Earth Issue (Autumn/Winter, 2004), p. 124Published by: Irish Pages LTDStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30022040 .

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IRISH PAGES

riding the molten core of magma - the invisible, radiant heart of the earth,

burdened by geography, charged with life.

COTTON BOLL

From here, the cotton fields stretch further than an ocean, undulant green, pocked with foam.

Little bush, burning in the catastrophic heat, how far did you come

to set root in this thick black earth, humidity rising, staggering belief?

Sheets, winding-sheets, underthings, handkerchiefs -

a polity of garments

spun from that one fine thread, yanked straight out of your heart.

Dyed, dark-stained with sweat, how invisible is the yarn that ties the weaver to the woven

when all we grasp is stuff -

the loosening fabric of desire, or of utility,

that we labour to possess, unlace, discard, then burn.

Sarah Maguire was born in 1957 in West London, where she has lived all her lhfe Her third book

of poems is The Florist's at Midnight (Cape, 2001) She is the Founder and Director of the

Poetry Translation Centre at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

124

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