About the poet
Michael Symmons Roberts (b. 1963) is the author of four collections of poetry, and won the...
I found the world's pelt
nailed to the picture-rail
of a box-room in a cheap hotel.
So that's why rivers dry to scabs,
that's why the grass weeps every dawn,
that's why the wind feels raw:
the earth's an open wound,
and here, its skin hangs
like a trophy, atrophied beyond all
taxidermy, shrunk into a hearth rug.
Who fleeced it?
No record in the guest-book.
No-one paid, just pocketed the blade
and walked, leaving the bed
untouched, TV pleasing itself.
Maybe there was no knife.
Maybe the world shrugs off a hide
each year to grow a fresh one.
That pelt was thick as reindeer,
so black it flashed with blue.
I tried it on, of course, but no.
from Corpus (Cape, 2004), copyright © Michael Symmons Roberts 2004, used by permission of the author and the publisher
Michael Symmons Roberts Reading from his Poems