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Friday Poem – ‘Peau’ by Damian Walford Davies

Photo of a dusty road bending to the left and disappearing into rocky mountains

This week’s Friday Pome is ‘Peau’ by Damian Walford Davies from his collection Viva Bartali!.

Peau Tour de France, 1938; Stage 14, Col d’Izoard, 22 July From the dustcloud belly of the baggage train, a megaphone bawled out your lead in cracked Italian through the moonscape of the Casse Déserte. There was time enough to notice how a fine grey dust descended on your arms, like mamma’s sifted flour from a sack the colour of the Virgin’s cloak, parching then to snakescale crust, sweat slaking it to clay until the staggered watchers at the summit saw a man of ash thrash past, his face a mask, and wished him such a steeping at Briançon as would be the utter shedding of a skin.

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