Wild Court

An international poetry journal based in the English Department of King’s College London

‘On the margin’ – a poem by Stephen Miller

 
 

    On the margin

 

On the margin
of existence
on the deep-sea floor
between chimneys of boiling water
and venting carbon
where no life should sensibly occur
shrimp-like creatures cleave to life
indeed, do flourish
on the edge of tolerance
in a sightless world of simple purpose

Here they say all beginnings came
in this hot soup of micro-
organism, annelid and gastropod
worm and crustacean

Inheritors of the cosmos
scratching out an existence
scuttling a route up
on an undying chain of sufferance.

 

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Author:

Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller is an author and poet who lives in London. He is an alumnus of King’s College London where he gained his Masters. He is the author of the books ‘The Word Made Visible in the Painted Image’ (2016) and ‘The Book of Angels: Seen and Unseen’ (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019). He was an active member of the now disbanded Poetry One and has contributed to a number of poetry magazines and journals. He is author of the pamphlet ‘In the Ruins of Ephesus and other poems’.