This poem is taken from PN Review 129, Volume 26 Number 1, September - October 1999.

Questions of the Woman Who Fell

Robert Minhinnick


Ah the sea,
Its screed adazzle.
How many like you
Have failed its puzzle?

I find the ledge you must have climbed
And lord it over thirty miles,
Each footstep munching corals in the chalk.
But why choose this place when you need to talk?

Nameless now
                You have become
The woman who fell:
Or rather
                The Woman Who Fell
Still clutching her mobile phone.
So what was the story you were planning to tell?

Did you hear the linnet
- Little geisha of the gorse -
Its three notes dialling 999?
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