TLOSGH - KEY QUOTES

reciting the poets Laureate for Miss Nadimbaba -

John Dryden, Thomas Shadwell, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe

flung her head back and

laughed like a bride

awake in the beached

boat of the marital bed

It was now the air

that they breathed

a black wave taking it down as she

gazed at the woman’s face

till the firm waves lifted her under her arms

and danced her away like a groom with a bride

their pink young lungs

flowering more than they had done for the hymn

snow began falling outside as though the clouds

were slowly being torn up like a rule book

Higher again, a teacher fell through the clouds

with a girl in her arms

the women teachers of England slept in their beds

their shrewd or wise or sensible heads safe vessels

stamping on the floor with their

feet in a rebel beat

A minor chord

stumbled and died

she felt her heart flare in its dark cave

hungry, blind, open it’s small beak