Poetry T – The Recusant

Poetry T

Tasos Leivaditis (1922-88)

Translated by N.N. Trakakis

If You Want To Be Called A Human Being

If you want to be called a human being

you will not cease, not even for a moment, to fight for peace and justice.

You will go out onto the streets, you will shout, your lips will bleed from shouting

your face will bleed from the bullets – but don’t take a single step back.

Each of your cries will be a stone thrown at the warmongers’ windows

each of your gestures will tear down injustice.

And beware: don’t lose track, not even for a moment.

If you start thinking back to your childhood years

you will let thousands of children be shattered into pieces as they play unsuspectingly in cities

if you look for a moment at the sunset

people tomorrow will be lost in the darkness of war

if you stop for a moment to dream

millions of people’s dreams will turn to ash beneath the bombshells.

You have no time

you have no time for yourself

if you want to be called a human being.

If you want to be called a human being

you might have to leave behind your mother, your beloved, your child.

You won’t hesitate.

You will give up your lamp and your bread

you will give up the relaxing evenings on the front porch

for the rough road that leads to tomorrow.

You won’t flinch from anything or be afraid.

I know, it’s nice to listen to a harmonica in the evening,

to gaze upon a star, to dream

it’s nice to lean over your beloved’s red lips

and hear her tell you her dreams for the future.

But you must take leave of all these things and set out

for you are responsible for all the harmonicas in the world,

for all the stars and all the dreams

if you want to be called a human being.

If you want to be called a human being

you might have to be locked up in jail for twenty years or more

but even in jail you’ll always remember spring, your mother, the world.

Even within the four walls of your cell

you will continue your journey upon the earth.

And when in the endless silence of the night

you knock on the wall of the cell with your finger

from the other side you’ll receive a reply from Spain.

Even though you see your days go by and your hair turn grey

you won’t grow old.

In jail you will begin each day younger and anew

as new battles keep arising in the world

if you want to be called a human being.

If you want to be called a human being

you must be ready to die any morning.

Overnight in isolation you will write a long and loving letter to your mother

you will write on the wall the date, your initials and one word: Peace

as though you were writing your entire life story.

Ready to die any morning

ready to stand before the six rifles

as though you were standing before the entire future.

Ready to hear, amidst the volley of shots killing you, the thousands of simple people singing while fighting for peace.

If you want to be called a human being.

Simple Words

I would like to speak

simply

the way you unbutton your shirt

and reveal an old scar

the way you feel cold at the elbow

and turn

to find holes in what you’re wearing

the way a comrade sits on a rock and mends his singlet.

To speak of whether I might return someday

carrying a filthy mess tin brimming with exile

carrying in my pockets two clenched fists

to speak

simply –

but for now let me lean my crutches somewhere.

We once dreamed of becoming great poets

we spoke of the sun.

Now our heart pierces us

like nails in our boots.

In the past we’d say: sky, now we say: courage.

We’re no longer poets

but only

comrades

with big wounds and ever bigger dreams.

The wind howls outside the tent

the barbedwire embedded in the belly of the night

the lamp broken

and leaking oil

Thomas’ face beneath the bandages

must be red and swollen from the rifle butt blows

the stench of smoke and feet

Elias says: the weather will change

Dimitris is silent

and Nicholas struggles to plug the holes in the tent

with a piece of boiled potato.

Someone coughs. We are cold.

The guards’ steps can be heard.

Tonight, mother, we’re thinking of writing to you

that we might hear the rain

walking along with your worn out clogs

that we might see your smile

hanging like a flask over our thirst.

They feed us rotten potatoes: don’t worry about us

they curse us and hit us: give us your love

maybe we won’t return – light the lamp, mother,

others will come.

Now you’d be gathering from the clothesline the white clothes of exile

you’d be sewing our socks with patches of your care

but the gloves you knitted for us, mother, we won’t wear them

we gave them to a comrade who was court-martialled

we also gave him some tinned food and a piece of our palm

he tied the top of the sack with a cord

tossed the sack over his shoulder

and we saw him going up

snipping with his scraggy legs

pieces of the facing sky.

Every morning they count us

every night we count the excess plates

there’s excess bitterness in our eyes

when the rain plays dice with the gendarmes

and night falls and the whistles growl.

Now we’re thinking of tucking our hands under our armpits

to see if there are any stars in the sky

to remember that face

leaning in the doorway

but we can’t remember

we have no time to remember

we have no time but to stand upright

and die.

Beloved

even if I feel cold when it rains

even if I fondle the crumbs of memory in my pockets

and my palms are still on fire from the time I held you

I can’t come back.

How can I deny the crust of bread that twenty of us shared

how can I deny my mother who waits for a cup of sage tea

how can I deny our child whom we promised a cornet of sky

how can I deny Nicholas –

we found out he was singing as the firing squad took aim.

If I were to come back

we wouldn’t have a lamp, we wouldn’t have

anywhere to lay our dream.

We would sit in silence.

And when I’d want to look at you

the tattered boots of the comrade I denied

would cover my eyes like a cloud.

Give me your love.

And when I return someday

carrying my heart like a large parcel

we’ll sit on the rundown steps.

I’ll say: You no longer like my calloused hands.

You’ll smile and clasp my hands.

A star will tinkle in the soaked sky.

I might even

cry.

Today we opened our day

like a sack forgotten over the years.

We searched for the socks you used to wear, comrade

your hands

your life that came to a stop.

Bitterness threw into our eyes

a handful of nails.

We then cleaned the cookhouse

lit a fire

and shared a smoke between us

beneath the ragged clouds.

Here where our lives are eggshells under their feet

with death closer still

and an elbow patch on your torn jacket

where the name of a dead comrade

is like a fork fixed to your tongue:

how can you sing?

It is enough for us to speak

simply

the way one hungers simply

the way one loves

the way we die

simply.

Tanner

when –

it gets to you,

when your job leaves you

exhausted, degraded and broke,

just remember what it was like

when you were looking for work,

remember how

exhausted, degraded and …

ok, so basically

it was the same, yeah

but hey – at least you pay taxes now!

at least you have the right to complain now!

unless you work in a shop of course

in which case, sorry, but fuck you:

so say

the slave driver workshy companies

and the slave driver workshy public

that exhaust and degrade you

for the privilege

of paying their taxes for them,

even when you’re broke.

damn. really? that’s REALLY the social set-up you have? damn.

I wouldn’t blame you

for chucking the Molotov

at something,

at anything or anyone

when it gets to you,

even if it gets to you

all the time

because it is

ALL THE TIME

so here,

drink this bottle of vodka while I look for my matches.

we’re hiring!

she hands me her C.V.

and there’s nothing on it:

it says she was born

that she likes computer games, and

that’s about it.

I know she won’t get the job,

poor thing

fresh out of school

but instantly stale

with a lack of experience

my own C.V. is too big,

pages and pages of temp jobs

in all sorts of places

up and down the country:

no one trusts me anymore

employers don’t account

for people moving around

to avoid people

people like them

who judge us

for having too

little

or too

much

experience

with equal prejudice,

you know?

Barry Tebb

Years

There is no way to bridge the chasm

Between the living and the dead.

Two years on you came in a dream,

Mute, expressionless, dressed in blue

Just as you were when I first met you.

Desperately we tried to speak

But our lips refused to move

As your image faded.

I Was Heathcliff bereft

Crying into the wind.

The Divine Pity

In memory of Brenda Williams (1948-2015)

For Alan Morrison without whose encouragement nothing would have moved and

for Daisy Abey without whose support nothing would have begun

The grief from your death is beyond measure

My closest friend for fifty years.

Remembering the rivers of hours

That passed between us, your early years

A harvest of sadness, only at the end

Had we worked through the nights you spent

At your mother’s side, walking the winter nights

To avoid your father’s rage.

We took those years apart

Nightmare by nightmare

Fear by fear, his steps towards the door

His threats, his flailing,

The hands of the clock

As the time drew near.

Your sister and brothers in bed

As eldest you must bear

Your mother’s fear

And be a shield

And still a child endure.

No longer here

You can mentor me

No more or catch

A doubtful metaphor

Or make coffee

While I explore

Your shelves to find

Delmore and his despair.

I have none of your cats

To caress and share

Piggy especially

Who would sit by your side

And adore.

I had a phone for you alone

And a second elsewhere

Our conversations metered

By the hour and every year

There would be more

I never thought to keep the score.

Joining the shards,piercing the shades

Through the lens of fear

Making clear the memories

Far and near.

1. A Ruthless Man

Love is not present in his heart, only anger and disaster resides in his path

He feels no care or compassion for his people, rather he is merciless and deceitful

Greed stays in his heart, and he is bemused at his own kingdom falling apart

How can a man be so cruel and unjust?

The cry and anguish of his people does not weaken his heart

For decades his people have been pleading for his mercy

For decades his greed has left his people’s pockets and stomachs empty

Who can stop such a Ruthless man?

Who can intervene and save millions of innocent human beings?

Who can denounce this ruthless man of his thrown?

Like a roaring lion he inflicts fear in the hearts of his people, and takes their belongings for his own.

Fairness does not exist in his kingdom,

Millions have been slaughtered by him and his army for exercising their freedom.

We should unite and do what we can,

To stop this disaster caused by a ruthless Mugabe

2. Running from homelands

I am like a bush rabbit that has missed the snares of cruel hunters

My heart is no longer tied to my habitual territory because of fear

Anxiety has dug deep in my arteries and terror is tearing me apart

I am choice-less and now exploring the possibility of dyeing in foreign land

My current jurisdiction is only a ground contaminated with strings of threats

From prohibited freedom of speech to the promiscuity of election swindles

I am a Zimbabwean unwilling to be brainwashed by unwanted old man

I have tasted plenty famines that left my plate of health in deficiency

I watched rich farms disappearing like dew in the morning

As the lazy new land owners behaved like lizards basking in sun

Fertile lands were twisted into a wilderness of void landscapes
Escaping Mugabe’s skeleton needles will turn me into a migrant

Barry Tebb

Reflections on Local Election Day 2014

Mondeo Man’s become a Kipper

Essex Man, his brother, has too.

Farage’s mouth opens wide enough

To swallow a London bus, he’d like to

You know it, his scary Goebbels said

We Londoners are too well-educated

And cultured to vote for them

I only hope so.

From Bangladesh to Brick Lane

From the Ganges to Tooting Beck

From Nairobi to East Cheam

Hands are joined.

Kaiser Cameron has a hunted look

And orders a doubling of border patrols.

IDS slavers, a Heydrich-in-the-making,

Clegg plans five more years as deputy Fuhrer

Practising Sieg Heil in his bedroom,

The least Farage would expect.

North against South but with

London holding out. A chill runs

Through Eastern Europe, the Slavs

Remember the Camps, the Poles the Ghetto.

Ed’s brow is furrowed, the Fabians suggest

A sharp left turn, Blairites a righter.

The editors of The Mail and The Express

Order the files of Der Sturmer translated,

Making ‘Jew’ into ‘scrounger’.

Sanctions on the disabled who cannot

Goose-step fast enough are planned.

Farage fears a failed bier-kellar putsch

And phones Le Pen for advice. Germ Warfare

Against the unemployed merits a glance.

Farage arranges a secret meeting with

Greece’s Battalion of the Golden Dawn,

Dreaming a second Kristallnicht.

Auden’s ghost follows Hamlet’s father

Across the ramparts but who is Hamlet

And who can divide the sea?

Measures of Science

for Debjani Chatterjee

For two hours in a dream you struggled to make me write

Forced me, made me ignore the banquet of feasting poets

Like an amah with a steel spoon you fed me the words

And so against the urge to sleep forced pen not pain to rule.

You refused to let me off fatigues “You must write, like it or not.”

The years you pushed back cancer with death the inevitable master,

You would not let me give up, “Scribble on the back of a paper plate”,

You urged, forbidding them to clear the table while I wrote against the grain

Against my own pain.

You charmed me with the story of your visit to the palace awash with poets,

Listening to your friend, Basir Sultan Kasmir going on and on to HM about waving

To her in Lahore fifty years before at the last royal visit, hardly a Durbar, just an open

Rolls raising dust, the children waving flags, shouting for baksheesh

HM must have had lessons in holding a smile, her beam continuous as

Carcanet and Bloodaxe presented, Duhig, McMillan and the sainted Carol Ann

Whom an hour before I struggled on the attic floor to read, gritting my teeth

At her mannish metaphor, bragging about beating boys at ball games and showering

Afterwards alone, the water pink with menstrual blood.

You had a single glass of bubbly with chips to nibble in Charing Cross Station,

Already preparing in your serene Brahmin way for a meditation retreat

Aimed at cancer sufferers and their carers so you so little me, preparing

Your power point presentation about Ramilla and Jerusalem the Golden.

You seemed stronger than me, was it the online course in CBT in preparation

For your MA in Art Psychotherapy? All you missed due to your travels was yoga

And boxercise. I was never one for crowds, classes or courses, more for controversy,

Protest and satire. The muse poet breaks through night sweats and sleeping pills painted,

Wilde adored and Yeats died for but managed to kiss and caress in a poem

‘To His Last Mistress’

My creativity was never so bad until the light bulb behind me exploded suddenly

Like a starting gun while I was struggling to comprehend the crucial emphasis of

Relational psychoanalysis, social theory, trauma studies, non-linear dynamic systems

Theories and the irrationalist psychoanalytic orientations, all anchored in contemporary

Dialectical constructive hermeneutic epistemologies.

Is it too late now? Heaney in heaven with Jimmy Simmons, equals at last.

All poets the same, sisters under the skin, scribbling, competing, backbiting

And you Debjani recounting the rage of Joe Winter, the chance meeting on a verandah

Of a guesthouse in Bengal, Winter at full throttle, demanding why the translation grant

For Tagore’s ‘Gitanjali’ going to Radice via the Arts Council Committee you chaired.

At the year’s turning I’m back in training, ready to compete with McDiarmid’s ghost

On the art of the long poem, with Mallarme on obscurity and Valery on the sublime.

Laura Taylor

Right Hand/Wrong Ink

A ragged-arsed philanthropy

fuelled by knowledge based on faith;

a myth-making ‘reality’ echoes in your throat.

The Money Trick you swallowed

works your tongue and teeth and lips,

and you claim a status eagerly,

handed down by men insane

with greed and acquisition:

“This is how it’s Always Been”

Red right hand writes black is white

in black and white;

war is peace; dots your eyes;

scribes within the margins in wrong ink.

Your pen emits a unity,

a summary of harmony

not found inside the whole;

of a union invisible to Jack.

Angela Topping

First Married Christmas 1933

The narrow house was world enough

for four of them, the old couple and the young.

Mary and Peter, newly-wed, living with her parents

in the only home she’d ever known.

Adeste Fideles and midnight mass, long walk

from St Marie’s to Moss Bank. Next morning,

wake to a Christmas full of family closeness,

pudding with silver sixpences, blackberry wine.

Mary felt the first flickers of new life –

my older brother making himself known,

a struck match in the darkness of my father,

still mourning his mother, his back-turned family.

Barry Tebb

My First Poem in Three Years

for Alan Morrison, whose ‘Emergency Verse’ inspired it

Mother in the mirror of another I saw you,

Bespactacled, bent, burrowing into a book

Like a mole snouting grubs in the churned marl

Your stick by your side, the twinkling in your eye

Always ready with a sly fiver to slip in my palm

And your dogged pride, a Durham miner’s daughter

Bequeathing to me the ghosted template

Of Methodist Sundays, Hunwick the hamlet

You grew up in, seven siblings to share, speaking

A tongue I could never master except “Haway, man”

Your teetotal Bible-punching father, turned Quaker

In old age, taking me for walks down hidden tracks

To lost villages where the stones spoke syllables

To the doomed skies and museless I cried

With the wheeling rooks in their spring tide.

I learned your canny ways years after you died,

Lonely in London and exiled, when I saw your face

In the mirror of another I cried and cried

And would not be denied.

THE VANDAL

Someone has been tearing up the autumn,
Its ripped leaves ripple across the road
Flip like hinged cards in the moist grass.
The rain-varnished houses vanish in smoke.
Drift on the air like blown-out breath in gusts:
So we forget frog-ponds and nut-gatherers,
Remember instead that weather’s for us
Who know well its intentions, wind-keen
Intense as the first frost hardening
Stubble grass to a tacky ice-blanket.
Listen! In bed we hear the swollen trees totter,
Dropsical-limbed, murmuring outside the window
Like Catherine’s insistent ghost voice
“Let me in, Let me in!”

Trapped

For John Lennon

Trapped, not in back entries behind terraces
but in posh Mendips with eyefuls of stained glass,
respectability in every spike of creamy porridge pebble-dash.
Everything neat and scrubbed, dishcloth draped over taps.

Trapped, by an upright aunt, whose expectations
weighed heavy as iron slabs of kitchen scales.
High grades for the bright boy, good job with pension,
work hard now for success later on. Homework to be done.

Trapped by fans, wa wa wa and love me do. Where were
the good years, writing songs with Paul? The years fooling
at school, flunking O levels on purpose, trying Mimi’s temper?
Fighting for the right to grow up, wear white suits, love Yoko.

Trapped in the end by a fan’s insanity, proffering an exit
marked by a gun, red blooms on a white life, imagine.
How far he was from home, lost Liverpool boy!
Trapped by our love, locked in legend, sealed on discs.

In His Eyes

He married a young girl, lissom and lovely,
her eyes were lapis lazuli, with hair of ebony.
She was cotton and lace, wholesome as honey,
his hands spanned her waist, she was dainty.

She was coral and amber, she was silver chains.
She crackled with wit like a greenwood fire.
She was crisp and fresh like an ironed shirt, slim
as a willow; full of life as a dancing flame.

*
He married a matron, comfortable and round,
her breasts expansive, her belly a mound.
She was silk and wool, warming as curry;
She was soft as cushions, cosy and snug.

She was TV by the fireside, a bottle of wine,
she was routine and clockwork, the daily grind.
She was weekends and laughter; she was warmth,
she was light, his young girl still in the peace of the night.

Atlantic Whale Fishing

Below, at night, I hear the salt airs of the sea,

a poignant mermaids’ tune we sailors fear,

the keening of the pitching ship, as, at the prow

our Jenny breasts the waves, the only girl aboard.

Timbers sigh as we sail farther from our home.

‘To wives and sweethearts – may they never meet’,

the awful joke accompanies our daily rum,

hides our longing like sailcloth covers the sky.

Stars grow unfamiliar as we sail beyond our scope.

I think of my Nancy, at home with our little ones,

waiting for money and these scrimshaw toys I carve.

The sea has made men of us all, and yet

it’s land we long for, till we grow homesick

for black and ice-berged sea, its infinite deeps.

David Trippas

It’s days like these, you sign on all year for.

Those few days each year, when it’s t shirt weather,
and for once the cannabliss plants look satisfied,
pink milky babies bottles of cider,
fuking fluoride for this rotting tooth of a nuclear nation,
it will take more than the flashlight of authority,
to turn of the light in a chillum of this starlit warm night,
those who say the solstice moon does not affect us,
should hear the chemical chains rattle on the asylum on the hill.

It’s oak wood elm of a sunny lake herb garden
and it’s dancing hot days like these, you sign on all year for.

fin

A country pub back garden.

The air conditioning roars,
like they’re testing a jet engine,
cigarette butts litter the parched ground.

Little dots of bright colour,
from the retirement garden centre,
sets of the indifferent bushes,
the wild sycamore triumphs as usual.

A swing for bored kids,
munching on a packet of salty crisps,
creaks in the dull day.

A local comes out to smoke a fag,
glares at us as if he’s,
wanted by the police,
but just can’t face going home.

The car park takes up half the pub ground,
the fizzy real ale is just about drinkable,
it last saw a wooden cask in 1934.

Chubby builders arrive,
looking at their tri-quarter,
dream of a chocolate éclair,
made by a girl in a huge shed in Kettering,
she dreams of love,
on a beach in Rhyl.

The traffic roars bye
and the Mrs. takes a smiling pride,
as she says the food is of,
a lone blackbird,
has given up listening for the sound of worms,
in the rock hard ground,
a women has been sentenced to be stoned to death in Iran.

Asylum Seekers

When Blunkett starts to talk like Enoch Powell

I think of Harold Wilson’s statue in Huddersfield Station

Caught striding forward, gripping his pipe in his pocket,

Hair blowing in the wind.

Could we but turn that bronze

To flesh I would have asked him to meet the two

Asylum-seekers I met in Huddersfield’s main street

And asked directions from. “We are Iranian refugees”,

They stammered apologetically. “Then welcome to this country,”

I said as we shook hands, their smiles like the sun.

Michael Thorne

An Evening on the Roof in Fez

What of the two ladies

Who look down upon me?

One has no teeth,

The other no smile

But still mirth and joy

As they watch me, the juvenile.

‘Why have you got no wife?

You wash in the evening

But the sun is gone,

How will you dry your clothes?’

Silence, no further thoughts

Other than my apparent lack of practicality.

Greet him, ‘Peace!’

No further conversation,

Still they stand in observation;

‘Why does he wash in the evening?

Doesn’t he know the sun is weak?

Allah! His clothes are not even clean!’

And Suddenly Alone

Holding onto symmetry I step out the door

But she is silent and unconcerned

So soon I am alone again.

I had her between my fingers and palm

But in the cool air of this evening

She has slipped away.

A shame that it’s so, when it felt right

I knew who the poets were

And I knew who had reason.

I knew it in the moments before

I had thought to dare

To open the street.

Now consumed I embark

Through the towers of faces,

Across the bridges and stations,

Between the eves of the circus

And in the fluttered dreams of the city,

I walk without purpose, but looking.

Symmetry had shown me a map

But my memory has deserted

As though unconcerned for my safety.

Hapless images flop through my brain,

In time I forget the design I sought

And rupture among them.

Now I consume and embark

Through the towers of faces,

Across the bridges and stations,

Between the eves of the circus

And in the fluttered dreams of the city,

I walk with purpose, but not looking.

The Suspect

None knew the suspect’s name,

Who lay in a state of disquiet,

Opening his arms to the world.

His wrapped smile

Faded his face into oblivion

From where he longed to return,

The shudder at his edges

Forced from his eyes a tear

Attempted hid, failed.

Beside his foot a cat skulked,

Keen in the warm morning light

That flooded its small halo.

The suspect had no words

To emancipate his feelings,

Except awkward stuttered gestures,

Misinformation he had no means to withhold,

Firing nuances into the world

That others failed to understand.

At a time when people seemed

Increasingly unconscious,

He remained starkly aware.

A pale imprint of Lucifer

Smiled from his skin,

To provoke but not estrange

And his jacket was a bulky hunk

Of schoolyard trauma.

His knuckles were white, his face

Crimson cold.

At a time when people

Did not care to wander,

He felt eternally alone.

Michael Thorne

The deepest void

How the breath pours out of the woman,

Dropping and grazing each cheek and

Sucking every kiss with her ebony charm.

There is a fulcrum rocking in the chest,

A groaning pelvis.

They pulse through the throbbing arteries of love,

Lifting up skirts over shaking thighs

And picking kisses across wet skin, steadied

Pounding

Free.

How the sweat pours out over the man,

Twisting, scorching in her wanton hum and

Building shuddering quakes in the early morning.

Theirs is an intimate translation,

Sucked out of the deepest void of the living world.

A neighing, beating, drowning ecstasy

That comes shuddering into existence,

Time and again,

Leaving behind no memories,

But the haunting loss of a haunting need.

The end of necessity

As if turning a moment in time could

make any difference!

Scorn falling on the head of each new idea

like a jealous father.

Has the era of isolation run its course?

Has the era of community and tribe played its cards

to be superseded by the emptiness of endless possibilities;

the boundless reaches of the modern dream?

The edge of the old ways;

Wilfred Thesiger’s time with the Bedu;

A groaning jolt of the train lurching forward and

Carrying me mechanically into the world

Of some other stranger.

These unfamiliar faces belie the similarity wrought

By hunger for a destination;

By longing for a tomorrow

That is distant and abstract and raw.

Harboured in the cola that I drank,

In the TV that flashed above my head,

In the car that I rode later that day,

In the tagine that I ate after sunset;

Diluted, muddled and unnecessary.

Innocence

I read an image of design,

Some remnant of civilisation:

Get lost! It shouted

And I got lost.

Get stoned! It smiled

And I did the same.

Get ready! It beckoned

And I lost my feeling.

Get out, it mumbled

And I left its side.

On seeing the unedited footage of war

Crowd fisted like screaming fools,

A wailing head in a mother’s breast

And all about falling, falling

Down into some terrible consequence.

The future,

Crying out with wild eyes

In unison, then in tandem, then disharmony.

Broken, shattered limbs and the boy,

The boy with the face half gone,

Still standing, numbly, swaying

In a hot desert wind that punctures his skull.

The crowd, throbbing and unwieldy,

Running like some maddened river

Through the obvious course,

Suddenly darts to stagger

Upon a fleeing stranger caught out of place,

Beaten to a pulp and raised above heads,

Body lifeless and no longer breathing,

Head flapping against the empty sky.

The crowd, maddened and quaking,

Shocking the walls of the houses around,

Hammering the shuttered shops.

Bathed crimson-red, white and brown,

Heavy in the scent of sweat and blood

That runs in the faces and in the gutters,

That rises to a crescendo

Endless, pulsing, unattainable.

The crowd, twisting and tumbling,

Uncertain of how to express

The multitude of fear, hate and despair,

Overflows,

Spills out into torrents, slows

To a trickle of heavy limbs, eyes, souls.

Grief in the consequence, grief in the means,

The ends and the beginning of it all.

Still shouting at forces they cannot stop

They are wild and desperation

Leads to belief in their own power,

The force of God, however misguided.

David Trame

Heaven

Where walls and stones assist you

envelop the rustling of your voice,

take the wood-panelled fortress

of the reading room, walls that cradle

the joy of unending gossiping,

a still point flowing in time;

the row of slate houses outside,

the streets where cars, bikes, all gears imaginable

can get disassembled or crashed

as in a child’s play on a merging horizon;

where you don’t feel guilty in being idle,

like a drowsy emperor at dinner

lying in his gold, leaning on one elbow,

marbled-in, pregnant with

a bee-hive of laughs and cries,

merged in the sea-roar, crossed further on

by shivers of light, currents like

those rippling on your dog’s fur

caught in his dream-tides.

Michael Thorne

A Long Journey

Two little ladies with their mother’s pashminas wrapped around their bodies,

radiant orange and striking purple,

skip around the passengers awaiting the time of boarding

in a dull grey bus station.

Their carefree games cause mother and grandmother to fret,

afraid that the grumpy crowd will not appreciate

this explosion of colour and song.

‘Sit down grandma!’ the younger girl demands.

‘They’ve got special chairs for old people like you.’

Grandmother, humble, smiles and takes her place,

rolling eyeballs and proclaiming to mother

‘How will we survive the journey?’

The skipping continues,

young smiles move in time with each other

through a forest of static faces.

I cannot resist sticking out my tongue

at the quizzing eyes that pop up in front of me

to conduct their brief survey in search of further entertainment.

It is a battle I know I cannot win.

Mother knows it.

And grandmother.

I say that noisy young girls travel in the cavernous underbelly of the bus,

just then emerging at the driver’s command

and triggering a flurry of activity from passengers keen to get the best seats.

‘No they don’t!’ the girls cry in unison.

‘You’re silly!’ the older girl shouts,

while her sister twitches and moves closer to mother, less sure.

“Don’t get them started,” mother smiles in disdain.

“You’ll regret it,” grandmother laughs. “It’s a long journey.”

Michael Thorne

Cartuja

I watch the fat man with the giant camera

Protruding from his chest like a wishful erection.

His wife and son trail behind,

The former apparently soaking in some essence

Of the spirit of this place;

The latter blankly following, an oblique fuzz

Emanating from the puberty of his top lip.

Will he ever look at these photos again,

really look?

Does he sense a shame

In the thick ornamentations made of Indian gold?

A sense of God in the marble floors?

The oneness of perspective among the orange trees in the courtyard?

Or is he just passing through, hovering

Not really here to assimilate

Just to look, snap and work up an appetite

Before moaning about the heat as he sits down to lunch.

The July sun

Peace comes when the July sun is at its sharpest

drumming hard to dry the morning’s dew.

Cut grass and hedgerows load with scent,

the whisper of the horizon holds out

not too far, not too close.

Other times seem like this, but are not.

The trained focus of the easy mind,

a longer time of warm languid stupor

Herefordshire (or thereabouts).

The eternal acreage of childhood dreams, reminders

that little moments remain longstanding

in periods of ethereal endearment,

both to childhood

and now to you.

My other eye

Your coca cola glass is filled with water

from a reservoir somewhere,

your pot of marmite

since breakfast.

Your Christmas cards

wait to be sent

received

sent again next year.

I cut a glass eye, slip it in

but I can still see.

Lovers’ Corniche (Cairo)

The lovers huddle in corners,

faces exposed to the Nile,

backs to the smoggy onslaught.

Close pairs in every nook,

the women coloured tapestries

culminating in the hijab.

Occasional giggles

give gestures of stolen time,

stillness, while all about rushes

universal.

Two lovers lean in close.

They almost kiss,

but continue to talk,

with slowing words

passing only as each tries

to hold onto themselves

without falling in to the other.

They hang, mouths

breathing lung to lung

words their lips

would replace with kisses.

Passion,

free from inhibition

and fettered by it.

The museum of antiquities

It takes me a minute

to convince myself I’m not

in a shopping mall in Dubai.

These are the real thing,

the ancient stone of Egypt.

The mark of the human mind

draws me to them like I am drawn

to a hill to mark nature’s mind

but the worship here is different

for I may pass judgement.

I reserve it. Who am I to know

that stone carved thus

is anything but the beginning of time,

the glowing worship of human form

set in a membrane of decay

Amun and Mut shatter in front of me

cursing their own unity.

Restored they sit defaced,

aged and ashamed,

though we still gather to worship.

Xelís de Toro

The Fishfinder

A fishing community tries to come to terms with the fact that the fish have gone from the sea. One day, a child appears on the shore floating in a little basket. The village folk believe that when he grows up he will have special powers which would allow him to find fish.

They bring him up to be the fishfinder. He grows up learning to point out hoping that one day he will be able to point out where the fish are. But when his time comes he realises he can’t find the fish. Rather than disappointing his people, in the dead of the night he steals the glints from everybody’s eyes and with them he constructs a giant fish, each twinkle forming and scale. The following day when the people get up they see everything blurred. The sharpness of their vision has gone with the stolen glints but they soon feel happy as they see the fishfinder pointing out an enormous fish on the horizon.