Marguerite Doyle graduated from Dublin City University in 2020 with an M.A. in Creative Writing. She received a Special Mention from judge John Liddy for her entry to the Desmond O’Grady 2020 International Poetry Prize. Her work has been published, among others, in DCU’s The College View, Reliquiae Journal, Vita Brevis Press, The New Welsh Review’s New Welsh Reader and shortlisted in the A3 Review and Anthology Magazine. Marguerite’s poetry has been selected for inclusion in the Ireland Chair of Poetry 2020 Commemorative Anthology.

Anna Akhmatova’s Guest from the Past

Just as I was lighting the evening candle
and drawing tight the veil on the winter night
beyond the cold glass stare; the pale
mouth and shadowed eyes that are not mine.

It was then you came to me, calling my name-
the way you whisper it like the Muse’s song.
How quickly the years fall away in dreams,
the familiar face in the flame’s halo,

frost glittering on the window like an icon.
I thought time would sweep away the memories,
fade the line in the sand that I had hollowed
out too late when you placed the silver ring

on my right hand that you took from your left.
O, what cruel jester brings you to my side-
the pied piper of peaceful sleep bereft,
or did you find your way without a guide?