The Picture Never Taken by Sam Gardiner

Haunting, a book of loss and elegy, of going on alone. It tells an honest, recognisable human story deepened and broadened by means of mythic references.

The Picture Never Taken

Who knows what storms brought him here,
Shaking the shine from his overcoat,
Hanging it on the hallstand by the throat
And combing the rain-clouds from his hair.

No need to ransack the archives to recall
Him barging scrubbed from the scullery,
The picture never taken goes before me,
His face patched with scraps of Lurgan Mail

Middled with red, which fluttered across
The fields as the day wore on, went from him
In small dismissals, cuts won yet lost.
Stubbled with shadow, war-worn from the fight,
His coming home was straight into the east room,
Where darkness gathered, to say good night.

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