 |
Gabriel Griffin Founder in 2001 and organiser of Poetry on the Lake competition, festival and events on Lake Orta, Italy (www.poetryonthelake.org); editor of annual anthologies and Poetry on the Lake Journal (annually, already published one and two).
Prized and placed in numerous competitions. Own collections: Campango and the Mouthbrooders, Transumanza.
Website: www.poetgabrielgriffin.com
Email: poetryonthelake@yahoo.co.uk
Pan-ic
Before I came
you thought to close
the shutters against the spying
night and if
the wind rose.
Before I came
you went outside and round
the house alone, shutting out
the surf sigh on the rocks, the scent
of smoke from over – where? – the caper
petals staining pink,
the goat.
You shut, shut, shut, locked in
the light, the joss-sticks’ glow, the sequinned
wine, a still, bright
gecko on the wall, the silky shine
of cushions waiting soft, the candles
flamed, the sitar on the CD low.
Before I came
you’d lost yourself outside, caught in
an antique dark, a starless
maze, a pagan
game, a Mediterranean
night.
Before I came –
you’d gone
Lament for an illegal immigrant
No moon, but fishermen
are used to that and the sea’s chanting,
the descant of the nets. The decks
silvered with sea verses, the minims
and trebles of fish hushed
into songbooks of ice.
Something didn’t sing, humped
in the net, thudding onto the deck.
Its ears heard no notes, its eyes
were blind to the men standing round,
its throat choked with words
that no-one would hear.
They let the sly octopus
sidle to the ship’s side, forgot to stop
the sardine’s arch and leap.
The sea moaned, the fish
slipped out of tune, the kittiwakes hurled
screeches like broken strings.
The men unfroze, thumped
what didn’t sing, what was lost for words,
over the hissing deck. Tipped what had
no hope, had never had a hope,
back to the sea. No word, no
hymn, no prayer.
But the rags of its clothes cried. The sea
beat its fists on the boat. And the wind got up
and howled till dawn.
Sea blooms
A shore. A path of stones past temples fallen long before
any tales we know. Scents of evening herbs – fennel,
calamint, spurge – of antique earths. No-one following,
no-one before. No voices from a present time. No line dividing
sea from sky. The mist curved high, immense, a hyacinth blue.
Hyacinth blue. And in that blue throb history and myth, sails white
and black and amaranth, the calls of sailors, sirens, monsters, gods.
A moment – rare – in which the Med brings forth its ghosts, to sail once more
to Ithaca, Calypso’s isle or Troy. Behind the mist ships clamorous
with shouts and arms, that fade to flutes and songs and sighs.
Songs and sighs borne over centuries and seas to shores
cemented by the years, herbs withered, dried; the cries
and clamours of today that drown the music of the ancient seas, where, by
bleached stones crumbled long before any tales we know, few
gaze at dusk when sea and sky dissolve into a vault of hyacinth blue.
Hyacinth blue. The only other colour in that dusk an oyster white
of temples fallen long before, a path bleached pale, a bloodless moon
scything mists of hyacinth blue. No-one beside me on the path, though
many have gone before. Too late now to board those ships lost in mists
of hyacinth blue. No new tales of heroes, gods. No sea, no sky.
No sea, no sky. Beyond this mist lie lands laid waste, dry desert fires,
the fading sounds of those whose cries are lost in sand, the tries of some
to board those ships and cross to where we so easily stand. Heroes?
Perhaps, not gods, but men who would survive unsung; daring
sea and sky and myth to build new lives. Their shore a path of stones.
Heedless
Something I’d
never thought about, had
always rushed in careful only
of rocks and weeds and
things that nipped or bit or
caught at my toes or
slipped round in a slimy
way. You said
to pray –
pray? Pray. Show
respect. Let
your hands not your feet
greet the waves; give
thanks, enter the Med
like a temple. (Hindu?)
I always mean
to remember, to do
as you say, to pray –
I forget! Here I am,
feet first in the spray,
soaking wet, tossing
water, hugged
by invisible gods, playing
a game even older
than they.
Tarantata
They keep on asking, Tell us what it’s like?
They’ll never understand! Why should I tell
of something far beyond mere lover’s bite
that leaves but little mark? This doesn’t kill,
nor paralyse, it hides no known disease,
no ill that they could treat. They think it’s hell
that I am going through, try hard to ease
my shaking limbs, slow down my frenzied dance
with needled calm, get my wild song to cease
with Librium. They bicker: Sleep? – No, trance!
I’ll fool them yet! I will my leaping legs
be still, until they go with one last glance
at scribbled notes and lines, the jumbled dregs
of lore and learning, volumes they can read
but never comprehend, the learned texts
which teach them nothing of the piercing deed,
the stinging bite that penetrates my heart
with venom sweet as wine that floods deep red
on virgin skin. Flames rage within, the heat
soon rapes my mind; drums – slow, then quickening –
compel my body to their violent beat
so I, responding to the beckoning
of unseen lover, writhe and coil like snake
that hisses in the hunt, tongue flickering
and wet with lust; my eyes once green, now black,
my hair a soaking web, my limbs on fire
and dancing hectic, Dionysiac,
to maenad calls, till frantically I tire,
spine jerking as my passion burns away,
the drumming fades, the flood of my desire
ebbs suddenly. I hear the women say:
Fine lover must she have, it’s surely bliss
that rouses such a passion every day!
I choke on my own tongue, won’t tell them this -
no lover’s there that beats – a spider’s kiss!
Nicotiana tabacum.L
“… a viscid annual or short-lived perennial”
In Umbrian fields: stooping, tanned, straw
hats over cotton fazzoletti, they slowly pan
down lines of green; the flowers cow-lung
pink, clustered in a brazen showing. Heat
shimmers the scene unreal; a card discarded from
a faded pack, its colours smudged and blurring.
On shaded terraces we pour cool wine, gaze while
they heap the baskets, carts, and straighten
sighing take the loads in lines to sheds,
seeds of sweat and tiredness shining.
*
No, thanks, I don’t! Leaves shrivel, twist,
contract like hands whose fingers yellowing
lose lymph, as they their cool ellipses.
Heat swirls the smoke haze of the shed;
in the darkening day a choking, bitter scent.
*
You cultivate flowers of your own; their petals
soft as ash, flyaway as clocks of dandelions.
Cut it out! Or down, at least. You’re young…
You laugh, inhale, breathe blossoms newly blown,
whorled, impalpable, feathery as down.
I close my eyes, see petals flake, fall, form
loam where spores seed, mycelia creep
and black fungi slowly grow.
The Gaslighter
Christmas cards, year after year.
A careful ink, in language
not his own. Mine a biroed note, best
wishes for the new and maybe this
year – I said it every year – I’ll come
back to your city. To its flowering
streets, palms fingering the sky, the scents
of roasting coffee, drains and wine, air
licking salty from the port. I’ll let my tongue
suck on sweet, forgotten words – gob-
stopped and jota choked – see once again
the gas-lighter blow blue kisses on the night and
the friend who made me laugh through tears for home.
I’ll catch the starry thrum
of strings from an unmapped south, hear
sharp heels clicking out of sight.
*
Things changed, I knew. The years
had cut and cut again the cards: kings on
their knees, new comets burning overhead,
baubled trees long tossed in fire. The gas-lighter
retired, wicking his blue dreams alone in stony courts;
the cobbles – that then leaked mud in rain –
paved clean, the maze of shadowed shops
mapped out, a tourist’s mall. The port had shifted
further down, its shoals and stinks
now out of sense and sight. Only the night
unchanged, blowing notes from the illegible
south, revealing the quick flare and skirl of a skirt.
*
I ‘phoned the number scribbled Christmasses ago.
Not there? When? Or – where? – words dredged
wearily from years of silt, loose change I’d
kept so long, their worth and shine
had rubbed away. A voice “Muerto. To tell you…
then it was too soon, now – it’s too late.”
The line went dead, buildings fell like cards. The city crumbled
into the ravine of all our years, strings snapped, notes died,
the dancers fled back south. I bought a card, wrote
Adios! in careful ink. And sent it to myself.
All poems on this post: © Gabriel Griffin
Photo: Alessio Zanelli
Published on mediterranean.nu with the permission of Gabriel Griffin
