Daphne Rock
1927 – 2008

Daphne Rock began to take her writing seriously after she was 50. Her first collection was published in 1998. A London Arts Board Grant in 1999 enabled her to pursue a series of geographical and social explorations (see publications list).

Is It Now (in St George’s Hospital)

Expecting the rushing meteor, the asteroid
large and dark, plunging from a cloud,
a suddenness and some brilliance,
hard to settle for
the catheter bag gasping on the floor, murky with urine
and the tubes marking flesh,
a world all body. If only
someone had painted the walls
into the unreal loom of gases, an eye
for the next world, dark or blazing.
 
In the night
a magic lantern of shapes
drifts around, light returning
and fading.
Is it now? How wraiths merge into moonlight
and dawn takes days to break.
 
Let my green soul sit on my lips
reaching for light while the body sings
of dark stone, of flint walls.

Daphne Rock

Poem published: Is It Now.

Publications:
Is It Now, 2006, Hearing Eye, ISBN 1905082231. £3. e-mail
Defoe, The Isle of Sheppey and the Fate of Things,
Circular walk through the Heritage Landscape of Blaenafon,
Easy to Miss: Looking for the Lead Miner in Matlock Bath, and more from Corundum Press (contact Felicity Rock);
Waiting for Trumpets, Peterloo Poets

Contact details for Daphne’s family:
Felicity Rock
83 Montrose Avenue
Leamington Spa
Warwickshire
CV32 7DR
 
tel: 01926 735626
 
Daphne’s Place on the Web
 
e-mail Felicity Rock

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