Jemma Borg
Chromatography
Chromatography
If it could, it would smell of lilacs.
If it could, it would rub its whiskered chin of violets.
It is the shade of a bruise and the gleam of aubergine
and the skin of plums
which hang their mouth-watering opulence
in a haze of wasps.
Just there, disappearing if you look directly,
at the edges of a rainbow, it sublimes
into grey slate clouds.
Ophelia made garlands with it
among the weeds that were growing by the stream
and the children of emperors were born into it
at the roots of a porphyry wall.
A distant star shifts
its note into red as it speeds into the past;
what's coming towards us is blue.
At the crossroads of these two colours,
the still moment waits.
You love that dark heart of its indifference.
If it could, it would taste of honey.
If it could, it would wear robes of roses.
It would not be itself at all.