Written

International Students’ Orientation 2013 (Photo credit: Birkbeck Media Services Centre)

You write your meaning
in golden ink

shaping letters
to make the lines

dance an unheard song
across naked space

so I wonder
at the silence

that surrounds you
which infiltrates

my own faint blood,
an echo of lace.

 

I wrote this poem, inspired by one of our international students who noted down an appointment in her paper diary when I organised it for her – instead of using the phone as 99% of our students do. I found it very soothing indeed!