Artwork

Cryptic Crossword

by Hamish Dodd ACROSS 1. Flowers left chess mob sorry to be so moved. (6,8) 9. Art Virgos, somehow high above us, wrote The Rite. (4,10) 10. Allusion changed slightly for deep respect. (9) 11. South Africa after uniform of country. (3) 13. Average day of this season to hear horse-like bullock. (6,7) 17. Genuine […]

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Culture, Music, Prose

Springing Out of a Fourteenth-Century Lockdown

by David Maw In his lengthy debate poem Le Jugement dou Roy de Navarre, the poet–composer Guillaume de Machaut related his experience of the Black Death. Celestial portents, earthquakes, and bad weather heralded its coming. It provoked processions of flagellants, conspiracies about poisoned water and air, and the scapegoating of Jews. Its victims suffered bodily […]

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Poetry

She Was the Blossom

by Siddiq Islam She was the blossom.Her pink, silken smile.And her peach-coloured joy.And her soft, petal style. She was the leavesAnd I couldn’t quite catch her.She dropped in the breezeAnd I just stood and watched her. She was the flowersI mushed in the mud.Her sap ran like tears.And she was the buds. And she was […]

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