Tuesday Poem - Apologising to Unicorns by Peter Boyle

                          Apologising to Unicorns

Apologising to unicorns is problematic. They rarely understand our purposes. Tenderness will often be seen as the manipulative gestures of a fear that seeks death – for itself and others. Unicorns sleep most comfortably in heavy traffic where the hum of self-absorbed commuters leaves them invisible. To find a unicorn in a forest is like falling asleep in English and waking up fluent in Pashtun. Someone may well have done it. Unicorns sense above all our uncertainty of ourselves, our not belonging, our poor talent for letting the miraculous be. Stripped back to primal desecration, our hearts still yearn for unicorns. We trail our mirrors in the waters of sky-stretched ponds. Although they will never look to us for food or shelter unicorns are reluctant to abandon their legend of our existence. Our one virginity is that we are not yet born.

Peter Boyle's latest book - Apocrypha - published by Vagabond Press, won two of the big prizes in 2010 here in Australia.

http://www.vagabondpress.net/Vagabond_Press/New_%26_Forthcoming/Entries/2010/12/4_Congratulations_to_Peter_Boyle.html

I noticed his work when his first book – Coming Home From The World – published by Five Islands Press in 1994, won the NSW Premier's Prize in 1995. So he has been at it for a while, writing wonderful poetry and scooping up the prizes. More power to his elbow.