POESIS
the madrigal, volume v
Surplus
by daniel fuller
Though I have found work here now
I am still afraid. You see,
yesterday I could not think of trying
anything; as though even the coffee dust
in my clothes sickens my mind or at least
makes a retching of this old exhaustion.
The trouble is the day is peeling from the walls
across the way with such a shallow light
and you are dancing in France—
you are so full of belonging,
and I can imagine you staying there,
making kinship of a foreign tongue.
But I could never be loved
in my own. So I work without belonging
and forget the old communion of morning and evening.
Daniel Fuller has been writing poetry since the age of 12. Though born in England, he has spent time living on Darug country (Sydney), in the lands now known as Australia, and is now based in Oslo, Norway, and each of these places has left an indelible print on his work. He draws inspiration from land and country as well as the deeply personal and relational. His work has been published in Rust + Moth, Yes Poetry and Creeping Expansion, and was shortlisted in the 2020 Bridport Prize.