Profile: Paul Surman

Paul Surman was born in Oxford in 1947, and has lived there all his life. He has been writing poetry for most of that time, and his work has been widely published. In 2012 his poems have appeared in 14 Magazine (the sonnet specialist) and Acumen, and further poems will appear in the next issues of Cake and Magma soon. He is a long time visitor to the Ashmolean.

THE ROAD TO EMMAUS

It was the weather of a dream,

like some rough fabric we wore

that chafed, a thin lightning

crackling uninvited

through the general disturbance

of our flesh: but our thoughts

were worse; stumbling past

images of things in a hopeless

sweat, the road ahead a blind

curse, narrowing into infinity

with us alone on it, barren,

speechless with mutterings.

Through the squint of seeing

the landscape was only the heat

shouting obscure sayings

from a book of the inert, a text

of light on rocks, repeating—this

is all there is: then he was there,

a stranger asking us what it was

we had just said; cruel, calling us

fools and slow of heart, quoting

scriptures, as day turned to a heavy

night that blundered along with us,

until on arrival we asked him in

for something to eat. That's when

the dull pressure of fear and heat

was released—and we were amazed

by sudden recognition, not of man

or god, but of a gesture, plain as

the blessing and breaking of bread.