The colour of imaginary rain
falling forever on your old address.
The lilac tint of someone else’s pain.
A bruise beneath the strap of your new dress,
yellowing, scatter of pollen never fell
as certain as the rising sun you never touched,
no, not with jaundiced skin. The purple of a well,
a drop, too deep and never deep enough.
A girl immortalised at boarding school,
the cover of an Enid Blyton book.
Her black hair, violet irises, her cool
and level gaze, her white shirt carefully tucked.
A house. The night you dreamed that you weren’t there.
Or how you shut your eyes and met her stare.
Poem by Helen Mort. This sonnet has been ‘recoloured’ and reworked by poet Geraldine Monk. Click here to read Mort’s original version. Listen to Helen Mort reading this poem on location in Sheffield:
This is the last of six sonnets to be uploaded for The Rose of Temperaments. Click here to access the index for all six sonnets.
The Rose of Temperaments | Poetry and Colour 