She must have been singing

Too hard on the cracked wine-glass

Of her forked voice

At the soprano mirror

Or just back from the dentist

With her haemorrhaging giblets

She's learned her husband is training

For the ministry of gynaecology

Or some outburst of modernism

Has given to her children violent births

And she's washing herself innocent

With tomorrow's linen handkerchief

That will be measled

With hard knots of mucus

Or she's a temple prophetess

On a hilltop who by shadows

Of the moon has foretold

Some migrained oracle

That there's a Beughel crow

Sitting stranded in a sillhouette

Of, yes, itself, on a black branch

Of a Beughel tree

And she's trying to catch back

The wild brain inside

Her flown cage of birds

Or the dried leaves of her change

Are still hanging like a bat

Across her crumpled face

Or the artist that night

Just had a bad head for figures.

Chris Sparks, Petersfield.

Daily Echo poet-in-residence Polly Clark writes: Many of us will know the famous Picasso picture of the weeping woman. This poet has captured the weirdness and fear of the picture in a strange and fragmented poem.

You can e-mail Polly on polly.clark@soton-echo.co.uk