When it came, we were getting ready
For bed. The gowns lay on the mattresses,
White as palms open for a coin.

I always loved how they spread themselves,
Armless & headless, across the sheets,
Loved that perfect stillness of things

Dropped from a great height. They stretched
The length of the beds like so many
Paper dolls. That night

The sandals waited on the floor, soft
Brown mouths, open & dumb as those
Of children. I loved how the feet

Came down with a slap, the straps
An embrace. We were kneeling
When it hit. Through the window

I saw its hand & when the others ran
I stood, walked the row
Putting on each pair of sandals, pulling

One crackling cloth over my head after another.

'Vesuvius (in the Priests' Quarters)'

SHORT LISTED FOR THE FORWARD POETRY PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST COLLECTION 2005

SHORT LISTED FOR THE WHITBREAD POETRY PRIZE 2005

 Marabou, Jane Yeh's first book of poems, is a meditation on the nature of artifice, and on the self. Her snapshots freeze fraught instants in the lives of a broad cast of characters: the horror movie mummy, an Elizabethan shoemaker, a flock of Cumbrian sheep; there's Harry Potter's owl and Oscar Wilde, two European princesses... In these beautifully crafted poems, her personae address the themes of love, lust, glamour and desperation with wit and flair. Hers is the language of fashion, espionage, revenge tragedy; her taut pressure-packed lines combine vivid detail and bold confession and reach unexpected emotional truths.

'Marabou is fresh and surprising. If only all first books were this unusual.' - Stephen Knight, the Independent on Sunday

Table of Contents

I

Correspondence

Double Wedding, 1615

The Pre-Raph�lites

Adultery

Convent at Haarlem

Cumbria

The Only Confirmed Cast Member Is Ook the Owl, Who Has Been Tapped To Play the Snowy White Owl Who Delivers Mail for Harry



II

Bad Quarto

Telegraphic

Monster

Paris, 1899

Teen Spies

Biological

Blue China

Love in a Cold Climate I

Love in a Cold Climate II

Divining

France, 1919

Substitution

Defence

Portrait at Windsor

Seaside Resorts

Parliament of Fowls

House

F�te Champ�tre

Vesuvius (In the Priests' Quarters)



III

Shoemaker's Holiday

Revenger's Tragedy

Rhode Island Waltz

Alchemy

Exercises

Self-Portrait After Vermeer



Notes