New Poetry by Mark Murphy

Anniversary Dinner with Borges

So the poet pauses as he passes

a few words

of Borges to his beloved.

She does not know he has been reading

Tigres de Oro, nor that he has learnt

the short piece by heart.

She does not know the words,

nor yet her own part

in the distinct possibilities of the future.

How could she know that in the night

her husband

had declared war on the past?

Today we feast on cheese curd

and curried peppers

he had said, with Borges as our witness,

whilst the obscurants and bibliographers

assign the profits

of oblivion and pedantry unto themselves.

- Mark Murphy 2012

Mark A. Murphy was born in 1969 in the UK. He studied philosophy as an under-graduate and poetry as a post-graduate. His first full length collection, Night-watch Man & Muse is due out in 2013 from Salmon Poetry, (Eire). Murphy’s poems have appeared in over a 100 magazines and journals world wide.