À Une Femme Africaine (After Baudelaire) Desire kindled by impossibility, My heart’s grown a chart of its own exile, Border-posts on fire, meridians awry. Distant four thousand and salt blue miles Again I see her treading sunwhite sand, Igniting my everyday with night; The cold north sky beneath which I write Is rolled back like so much old carpet, Ocean and desert packed within a sigh – Lithe souvenir! Sinuous spectre! Out of a blaze of loneliness I sing her – Though absence dupes, distances disguise. Martin Bennett | Mudlark No. 12 Contents | Dialectic: Staffroom 3