{"id":25687,"date":"2014-05-20T06:30:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-19T18:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=25687"},"modified":"2014-05-18T15:41:20","modified_gmt":"2014-05-18T03:41:20","slug":"the-tuesday-poem-refeaturing-the-foreign-office-by-victoria-broome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2014\/05\/20\/the-tuesday-poem-refeaturing-the-foreign-office-by-victoria-broome\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tuesday Poem: Refeaturing “The Foreign Office” by Victoria Broome"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Foreign Office <\/strong><\/h3>\n

for Judy and Roscoe <\/em><\/p>\n

He had two great passions and one dream,
\nMozart, The Great Wall and romance. In soft
\nmorning light he rode out on a rented bicycle
\nto see the Great Wall. Smoke and steam rising,
\nthe sound of air rushing through wheels on
\nthe broken road. He felt the hard saddle, his feet
\nin the pedals, he felt hopeful.
\nThe breeze coolly lifted the hair from his neck,
\nevery now and then he turned to watch autumn
\ncolours bleed and fade out in his trail, people
\nflowed past, their voices washed over him.
\nA river around an obstacle, a moment in time.<\/p>\n

A young woman who would become his wife,
\nis travelling on a train to Peking, a very English
\ngirl, with fine auburn hair and eyes like Audrey
\nHepburn\u2019s, she even has the same long swan neck.
\n( That was his memory, she was still unaware of herself.)
\nOn the rocking train, in the vast landscape,
\nshe is attempting to roll up the hair of her Chinese
\ngirlfriend, it is a thick black mystery and hairpins
\nspring from it like coiled dragons.
\nIt was an exotic world then, travelling through
\nthe orient and the old silk road, eating apricots
\nin Persia. Life in the Foreign Office in the 1960\u2019s.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t meet yet, they are still travelling
\ntowards their futures.<\/p>\n

(c) Victoria Broome<\/p>\n

Published in Flap<\/em>: The Chook Book 2<\/em>, 2010<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

As I posted on Saturday 17<\/a>, I am currently refeaturing Tuesday Poems from the past four years \u201cby poet\u201d, i.e. focusing on those instances where I\u2019ve featured more than one poem by the same poet. I am also doing so alphabetically (by surname), which makes this week’s poet Victoria Broome.<\/p>\n

To read Victoria’s bio, please click through to the original feature, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Foreign Office for Judy and Roscoe He had two great passions and one dream, Mozart, The Great Wall and romance. In soft morning light he rode out on a rented bicycle to see the Great Wall. Smoke and steam rising, the sound of air rushing through wheels on the broken road. He felt the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25688,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25687\/revisions\/25688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}