Siriol Troup read Modern Languages at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, later returning to teach French there. She now lives in Twickenham and is married with four children. Her poems have won top prizes in several competitions. Her first poetry publication was a pamphlet, Moss, winner of the Poetry Monthly Open Booklet competition in 2002, and her first full collection, Drowning up the Blue End, came out with bluechrome in 2004. Camus and the Spiders, which is part of this collection, won First Prize in the Pitshanger Poets Competition in 2004.

Quelle: poetry p f/ Sabine Stiglmayr

Camus and the Spiders

It’s their tenacity that draws me in—
all that nimble bloody-mindedness.
Four shell-backs at my window, a miniature
crocheting bee, the workers ambitious
as Daedalus, not a hint of arthritis
or trigger-finger as they cast their lines.
They have a plan and they stick
to it: dream homes, castles in Spain,
folies de grandeur to rival Ludwig’s.
No need for safety nets or crampons:
watch them hang by a thread, free-
fall in slow-motion through thin
air, straddling the void with a sequence
of rope-tricks that leave Tarzan standing.

How easy it looks, taking the world
on trust! Trust them to shake a leg
at rose-bushes and tornadoes, to start
from scratch, again and again and again.
Hasn’t anyone told them that even
the most complicated embroideries
get lost in the post? That the window-cleaners
will be calling tomorrow? That tout
le malheur des hommes vient de l’espérance?

first prize, Pitshanger Poets Competition 2004
first published in Poetry Ealing 13
in collection Drowning up the Blue End,bluechrome, 2004