Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

is stillness paused in stone,

the bronze cast of a posed god,

Eros, whose face, limbs,

have softened to childhood.

It is the breath before prayer,

a window staining its church

with sacred light; or secular,

a cashpoint glowing

in a late night precinct.

Sleep is air, the secrecy

of a barn owl in flight;

her pale pulse. It is the last gasp

of smoke from a candle, blown

for a wish; a seed puffed

from its stem to stray beyond sight.