Two
poems from Chris Preddle's Leaf by Human Leaf
followed
by a note on the author
Numbers
As
diagonals
drawn from angle to angle of a regular pentagon
always intersect
in the Divine Proportion, Leonardo's Golden Section,
fie,
Jacqueline, fie,
beautiful things in this ratio of phi for Phidias
seem to outnumber
even beauties of your form and self I'd thought without number.
No.
Because
those numbers-in-relation
are our opposites, exact, abstract, replicative, causeless,
I,
human-
in-relation, now relate
how in numbers I number your beauties for their humanness.
Bohemia
You've found this lost edition
Derek had searched for all his life,
The Winter's Tale with its errors, leaf
by human leaf,
cancelled,
rescued like Leontes from perdition
by a secondhand bookseller and his Bohemian love,
just where Derek used to live;
though
you've completed his Shakespeare at second-
hand, keep on, Ken, go as far
as Paris or Bohemia, go to bookstalls, fairs
and festivals, consider your search, not cancelled,
consoled,
take him to book-cellars and backrooms, visit Shakespeare and
Co.
©
Chris
Preddle was born in London in 1943 and educated at Stonyhurst
College and Oxford University. A librarian until his retirement,
he lives in Holme, West Yorkshire. Chris has one previous collection,
Bonobos (Biscuit Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2001),
and his poems have appeared in various magazines, including
Poetry Review, The Rialto, The Shop, and
Smiths Knoll. He won the Biscuit Poetry Prize in 2001
and the Yorkshire Prize in the Yorkshire Open Poetry Competition
in 2005.
