Poem of the Week: ‘postscript’ by Mary Jean Chan
25 November 2024
Our Poem of the Week is ‘postscript’, the final poem from Bright Fear, Mary Jean Chan’s second collection.
postscript
in the penultimate scene where mother
and child are listening to one another
speak in spite of everything the way
an orchestra might play on bravely
even when the audience claps before
it’s time you will want to stay awhile
in subtropical winter heat as sunlight
blazes through the fog of memory you
begin to wonder if the origin story can
at last be transfigured into the version
redacted through the centuries (the one
in which the garden comes alive) a queer
child’s vision of paradise where the trees
are free to bear their multitudinous light
Copyright © Mary Jean Chan, 2023. Used by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd. All rights reserved.
‘postscript’ by Mary Jean Chan is from Bright Fear.
This keenly anticipated new collection from the Costa Poetry Award-winner speaks ‘out of fear and grief into splendour and joy’.