20: SUBMERGED

Anna Jackson: The ceiling becomes a marble slab

Some people's dreams are vast
enough to build houses on.
I am always falling.
The lift cable snaps again
as if the other dreams
were the premonitions
of this one.
In the morning
I am always stalling,
not wanting to rise up
to a life always over my head,
the sto ste sto ste of poetry
bubbles I send up, a buoyancy
I give up to stay fast.

Anna Jackson's most recent collection is Catullus for Children (2003) - not really a book of poetry for children, but a new experiment within the tradition of translating Catullus into English.