Cassandra Voices

Category: Literature

  • Poem: There is a Panther on the Streets of Paris

    There is a Panther on the Streets of Paris

    slinging hammocks of intent between each step,
    hunting unbroken hearts beyond the senses.

    No one knows.
    Rumours breeze like leaves along Boulevard Saint Germain.

    Another takes a table at Le Café Des Arts
    indistinct in clouds of Vogue Bleu.

    No one.  Not even the off-duty gendarme
    whose breath caught in the branches of his lungs

    when he glimpsed its paws’ dry prints
    on Rue De Verneuil after rain.

    A physician at Hôtel-Dieu
    treated a man who claimed the creature styled

    his hair with an upward rough-tongued lick;
    a couple on Pont De Carrousel who swore

    they were undone declaiming love,
    as if their hearts were removed to make one.

    An ophthalmologist looked behind fiery eyes
    the day Notre-Dame succumbed

    to its blood against the sky,
    and the dense fur of melanistic night.

    Feature Image: Denishan Joseph

  • Contemporary Turkish Poetry Considered

    Review: Fog Bells: 8 Contemporary Turkish Poets (Dedalus Press, 2025)

    “A writer’s life”, the poet Nick Laird once remarked, with a self-assurance befitting a Royal Society of Literature Fellow, “is a cycle of trying to get to their work, sitting staring at the blank screen, wandering off, steering their reluctant bodies back” to the desk where they compose – out of the ambient, affluent bustle of London or New York, where they live – a “pattern” on the page, to make sense of the “chaos of daily circumstance”. Given the apparently placid tenor of Laird’s own routine, such “chaos” would appear to be largely symbolic, or at least to unfold outside the pale of the writer’s bubbled existence, self-absorbed and self-admiring.

    Sometimes, of course, the amiable sequestration of even the most punctilious of poetic solipsists can be disturbed: by disruptive riots or bad reviews, human rights abuses or pesky up-starts who have the audacity to care. It’s then that the holy guardians are called on to defend and re-sanctify the art, imperilled by a round of “daily circumstance” grown all too intrusive. To quote Ireland’s current Chair of Poetry, speaking in 2017:

    Must poetry be louder, must it be more active, more politically and socially engaged? I can’t bring myself to believe that the answer to this is yes. Poetry’s response must be to remain true to itself rather than rush into rhetoric. Poems shouldn’t be about getting a point across.

    Poetry’s right to be pointless, the poet’s freedom to shun the claims of political or social conscience: these are the resounding criteria, the engraven ingredients, of literary greatness.

    We might wonder how such prescriptions would be received in Turkey, a country which, under the influence of Recep Erdoğan, has undergone a process of forceful “authoritarian consolidation” in recent years: the diversity of a multi-ethnic polity replaced by a top-down state “restructured along hyperpresidential lines” and specialising in “the mass persecution”of perceived “dissidents, who have been jailed in their thousands.” Where censorship and imprisonment are looming realities for citizens (including writers) who dare to ask questions – and even occasionally attempt to get their “point across” – it’s possible that the supposed right of poets not to think or care about very much beyond their own line-breaks would smack of empty-headed conformism, rather than the liberty its advocates pretend.

    Perhaps post-doctoral literary scholars of the future will resolve such paradoxes and speculations definitively, for one and for all. For now, readers can occupy themselves with Fog Bells: 8 Contemporary Turkish Poets, a new bi-lingual anthology from Dedalus Press, carefully curated and translated by Istanbul-based poet, Neil P. Doherty.

    Doherty’s versions pay tribute to the range and vitality of his chosen poets – spanning multiple generations, but all still in their literary prime. His own style becomes recognisable as the book progresses: each voice he presents has its own kind of under-stated wit and oneirc clarity, catching the rhythms of history in a vivider light. “The world is a saddleless horse”, observes Gökçenur Ç., “we try not to fall off”, though “we whisper ‘you couldn’t be real’ / into its ear.”

    There is often a philosophical undercurrent surging just below the surface of these writers’ attentions, poem after poem, in the words of Cevat Çapan, “tirelessly / seeking for the roots of life itself.” The marginality and strange endurance of human yearnings become connecting threads in the expansive tapestry Doherty draws into billowing life. “This graveyard we call memory”, notes Elif Sofya, “grows and grows in our heads”, a “haunting of the body” now metamorphosed into words

    Time and again, the richness and intensity of individual perceptions are balanced – granted weight and depth – by a galvanizing recognition of story-telling as a mode of shared (albeit frequently contested) consciousness. Gonca Özmen thus recalls and elegizes the victims of the Roboski massacre, carried out by the state military against a group of (mostly teenaged) Turkish civilians. “Branches entwined in a verdant forest” give way, in the poem, to “arms and legs entwined in an empty forest”, as a spectral crowd of grieving mothers assembles in the aftermath, “day and night clutching these soaking wet photographs”. Mustafa Köz, similarly, manages to hold the broken world, like a fallen teardrop, in delicate suspension: it “was for all of you that we exiles set out on the road at dawn”, he sings, “for the sake of these lands, crushed under bloody, iron heels.”

    The full range of felt emotion – encompassing grief, joy, whimsy, longing – seems somehow distilled and honoured in this vibrant anthology. Among other things, its arrival may send a reviving gust of energy through the more insular spaces of Irish culture. Poetry’s horizons have always been broader than the comfortable confines within which many of our cliqued and sinecured gate-keepers have been content to keep it slotted. Its home is the world, and its journeys manifold – across languages and histories, alive with “the honour of carrying / This light.”

  • Poem: Luke 2:1-7

    Luke 2:1-7

    _           It was the time Augustus Caesar had cried pax
    As children used to do, and said the world must now be taxed,

    _           When Joseph, following the government decree,
    Went out of Nazareth and travelled down through Galilee.

    _           If words are put into a prophet’s mouth, and before
    He knows it, he’s uttered them beside the trembling posts of the door,

    _            Then Caesar’s made unwittingly an agent of God’s
    And Joseph’s destination is, against all the world’s odds,

    _            The one that destiny and Micah once decreed.
    Each little act they performed there becomes for us a deed

    _           Of great significance, but in the ancient text
    You’ll find no search for a place, no donkey, no Joseph vexed

    _           By three refractory innkeepers, no ass and ox,
    No treasured doll that’s laid inside a painted Amazon box

    _           And children crawling around as sheep, causing mayhem.
    We are just told it was, when they arrived in Bethlehem,

    _           That the days of Mary’s pregnancy came to a close
    And she brought forth her firstborn son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes,

    _           And laid him in a manger, since there was no room,
    No, not in Tyndale’s inn, or Virgil’s, or that of Jerome.


    Feature Image: A painting of Bethlehem by Vasily Polenov, 1882

  • Poem: ‘External Return’

    Eternal Return

    My sixteen year old daughter comes to me to complain about
    Patrick Kavanagh.
    O great irony, hardly are the words out of her mouth
    And I can see those fucking potatoes,
    The drills and the furrows of old bloody Monaghan!

    Why do we do it? Why does every generation get subjected
    To this kind of shit?
    Isn’t Life bad enough without having to force poetry
    About bleeding potatoes down their bloody throats!

    And then, just as I am almost in despair,
    And I’m a bloody poet myself,
    Her voice pipes up again, and she adds;
    “Although, Epic isn’t half bad, at least he mentions Homer!”

    And, I see again my reading of the poem through her eyes,
    When I too saw the ancient importance ricocheting
    In Paddy Boy,
    As she too recognised the importance of Homer
    And his epic take on Life.

    Staring across the kitchen table at her,
    With not a potato in sight,
    I somehow saw the great blind ancient hovering above us
    Monumentally human, whispering to us both
    Across the infinite.

  • Fiction: The Cliff

     

    “It’s been two days. We gotta to do something. It’s gonna go rotten.”
    “I know. I’m thinking.”
    “About what we talked about?”
    “What?”
    “Get on the Great Ocean Road. Out past Martyrs Bay.”
    “Yeah. I know the place. Near the twelve apostles.”
    “We were there with Jessie that time, remember?”
    “Yeah, I remember. Alright. Let’s do it then. Get some sleep, we’re leaving here at two.”
    “In the morning?”
    “Course in the fucking morning.”
    “How long will it take to get there?”
    “We’ll get there before sun up.”
    ‘I’ll get the weights.’
    “On ya.”
    Wilko and Daz settled it that night. How to get rid of the body. They had bought half a kilo of speed from Jock Cooper up in Melbourne and things had gone wrong. In the fight, Daz shot Jock dead and now they had him wrapped in carpet and duct tape in the boot of Wilko’s blue Ford Cortina. They had never killed anyone before and both had a dread feeling about their circumstance. They were consumed with dark emotion. At this point they were the only ones that knew about the murder. No-one had heard the gun shot. The next farm house was four miles away. Anyway, the sound of gunshots out there wasn’t uncommon even if someone had. Shooting kangaroos was one of Wilko’s jobs. In short, no one was looking for them, yet. They hadn’t left Wilko’s farm since the killing. They had been living with the body for two days, wondering what to do.
    The adrenaline rush of the kill surprised them by its force. The weight of becoming a killer threatened to overwhelm Daz, but the two days he had spent with the body had given him time to meditate on their situation. The fury that led to the murder was now partly subdued by a lack of remorse. Daz had pulled the trigger, but their history was intertwined closely, and to betray each other would be to betray their childhood selves. A notion beyond their imaginings. They were in it together and they knew it. They both understood that if they didn’t keep cool heads they were done for. And now, after two days, the time had come to act. There had been a heavy rain storm that day and the area around Woodend was drenched through. There was a chill wind in the evening air.
    ‘Fucking cold.’ Said Wilko as he put on an extra sweater and zipped up his coat.
    “Chat.”
    Perhaps that’s why the country exists in the first place, so the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish didn’t have to suffer the winters any longer. Wilko looked out the kitchen window as it was being battered by the rain.
    “We’ve fucking gone and done it now.” He said to Daz.
    “If you haven’t got anything useful to say don’t say it. Alright? Now get ta fucking sleep. We’ve got work to do. If we don’t get it right it’s thirty-five years in the slammer. So, I’m only going to say this once. You be careful hey. Or I’ll fucking kill ya.” Daz turned out the light and soon after began snoring, but Wilko stayed by the window watching the rain. He was too alive to sleep. The game was on. Wilko looked over at Daz sleeping and burned a cigarette, each draw he took carefully and deliberately. Looking carefully, he became fascinated by his sleeping friend. Wilko was scared of Daz at times. Ever since they were kids there had been a hierarchy. Daz was both older and stronger and those two factors clinched it. If it had to be called, Wilko was probably the cleverer of the two but there wasn’t much in it. Neither of them had a handle on science, or God for that matter, they were men who were characterized by action rather than thought. And that, if the truth be known, was how they found themselves in the situation they were now in.

    *

    The alarm clock went off at precisely 2.00 am and Daz was up and dressed in seconds. He splashed a bit of water on his face from the sink and lit a cigarette, trying to prepare his mind and body for the grim task ahead.
    “Oi. Get up ya fucking bludger, we gotta go. Get a move on!” And Daz kicked the edge of Wilko’s cot. As Wilko rose up quickly in the bed something went wrong.
    “Ah fuck!” Wilko let out a low, doleful whine.
    “Come on, what are ya waitin for?”
    “Me fucking neck mate. I’ve pulled a fucking muscle in me neck. Ah ya cunt.” Wilko sat up and almost screamed with pain but managed to suppress it with a chuntering kind of sigh.
    “Oh, this is fucking all I need. Where’s the fucking beer? I need a fucking beer. My neck’s fucking crook mate. Ah fuck.” Daz went over to the fridge and pulled out a six pack of beers. As if his mind refused to believe it, he tried to move his neck in a normal way and there it was again. The intense pain of a pulled neck muscle.
    “Come on get ready. No drinking in the car though. We gotta keep our heads down and out of any copper’s sight.”
    “What about me neck?”
    “Fuck ya neck mate!” Came suddenly, shouting. We gotta get rid of him. You hear me? I’m not fucking joking. Get your shit together, we’re leaving. Now.”
    A forlorn looking Wilko stood up, clasping his neck, and followed Daz out of the farm house and towards the truck. The rain was coming down hard when they opened the farmhouse door. Wilko looked up into the rain as he stepped off the porch to wake himself up and the pulled muscle gave him a shooting pain that rattled his whole body. He grimaced and left his hand firmly by his throat to remind him of the pain he had suddenly and unexpectedly acquired. The rain pounded them as they walked towards the car, and there was an audible ‘fuck me’ from Daz as he put the key in the door and turned it. Wilko could now only move the top half of his body in a robotic way. If he needed to look in a certain direction he had to move his whole torso towards the object, keeping his head and neck as rigid as possible. As Wilko sat down and shut the car door he turned too quickly and again an intense shooting pain bounced from his neck muscle to his brain. He grimaced and found himself unable to muster words. He felt acutely miserable. He put on his seat belt slowly, taking great care not to turn his head. He still had sleep in his eyes. ‘Drive slow and safe, I can’t move me neck.’ Daz turned the key in the ignition but even the engine starting wasn’t enough to drown out the sound of the drumming rain on the car. The headlights came on and they started moving cautiously along the country lane in the wild storm. Before long they turned on to the main road that would take them south towards the twelve apostles, the great rising stones that awaited them in the fortress of the swirling sea. That would be the three of them. Daz, Wilko and the dead, now decomposing body of Jock Cooper in the boot.
    One of the bonuses of trying to dispose of a dead body in Australia is its vast emptiness. It has half the population of Spain spread over a continent almost the size of Europe. The only problem was that driving that late at night might arouse suspicion, in the unlikely event of them passing the police. There had been no sign of the law as they reached the Great Ocean Road. They glimpsed the Southern Ocean, singing in the moonlight. Wilko had one hand on his neck as he lit a smoke and opened the window a few inches, only to feel the rain speckling his face.
    ‘What do we do if we get pulled?’ Asked Wilko.
    “Stay calm. I’ll tell them I just found out me mums had a fall and we’re on our way to the hospital. I’ve done it before. It’s about the performance.”
    ‘Bit of an actor hey? Fair play. So, what’s the name of the hospital?”
    Daz didn’t know.
    “Fuck’s sake.” Wilko said in a disappointed, worried way and looked out the window, suddenly mesmerised by the glimmering ocean light. As Wilko turned naturally to take in the view, pain pulsed through his neck and he leant forward with a sigh. They both fell into a melancholy silence.
    The one thing they knew to be well careful of was the potholes. Ruin the suspension or burst a tyre out in the wilderness in a storm and you were done. It was still pitch black when they reached the Great Ocean Road and the pelting rain turned the Ford Cortina into a kind of bongo. There was almost no one out there. Every ten minutes or so they would be passed by the rolling headlights of a car, with their eyes peeled for the coppers.
    “How much further d’ya’reckon?” Said Wilko.
    “Get the map out, it’s in the glove compartment. We’re coming up to Lorne.”
    “Righty-o.”
    As Wilko studied the map in the passenger seat, a sign flew past in the rainy lights that said ‘THE TWELVE APOSTLES 145 KMS’. They both thought about the body in the boot of car, driving on in silence with the storm making the music about them, Wilko with his head down to the map and Daz with his hands high up on the steering wheel and his eyes fixed on the road ahead, unblinking. They would be there at the cliff in a few hour’s tops.
    “We’ll get there well before sun up.” Daz reiterated. ‘Rain’s slowing us down.’ Forgetting about his neck momentarily, Wilko turned to look at Daz and felt a fierce shooting pain shot through his neck again. Now, the agony rendered him silent, and he slowly closed his eyes, wondering whether it was all worth it. Life. Was it worth the suffering. Daz looked at him and knew he wasn’t faking. Then there was a flash of sheet lightening as Daz turned his eyes back on the road and in the illumination, he suddenly saw a fully grown female kangaroo bouncing across the road in the headlights.
    “Fuck,” Shouted Daz and he hit the brakes. Never swerve a roo was a thing his dad had taught him from his earliest years. As the pain in his neck subsided Wilko opened his eyes to the sound of screeching wheels, and the first thing he saw was the Kangaroo smashing into the windscreen with an almighty bang.
    “Cunt!” Shouted Daz in the death flash. After the great thud there was the sound of shattering glass, then the airbags, and then the halting tyres on the tarmac. Finally, the falling rain from the womb of the car. Inside silence. The vehicle was still on the road as they came to a complete standstill with the dead Kangaroo up on the bonnet, dead in the broken windscreen. Time passed before they began to stir. They came to their senses almost simultaneously.
    “Fuck a duck.” Said Wilko. Daz laughed a mad laugh. Wilko turned his painful neck to look at him and Wilko registered the bright red and scarlet in Daz’s face as he laughed, as the insignia of a maniac. The body of the Kangaroo was half inside the car and Daz could see its dead eyes staring vacantly between the air bags.
    “Fuck.” Came the groaning Wilko, he now had whiplash on top of the pulled muscle. Daz pushed the airbag away the best he could, opened the door and stepped out into the rain. He retched a little and spat out bile but there was no puking. His heart was beating fast, getting wetter by the second in the downpour. The sight of the dead Kangaroo on the bonnet increased the mania in his laughter. He was feeling the overwhelming sense of providence that surviving death can invoke. He did a little dance in celebration with his arms in the air. Then he heard Wilko’s voice screaming out of the darkness.
    “What are doing ya mad cunt?! Remember what we’ve got in the boot? What if someone sees us hey?! Get in the car. Fuck’s sake. Come on. Get in the fucking car! Let’s go.”
    Daz looked up and down the rain soaked, night time highway. There was nothing out there, except the great swaying trees and the night. This was the boundless country. They both became lost in thought as they tried to keep calm. Using all their strength they took hold of each end of the dead kangaroo, lifted it off the bonnet and dropped it on the grass by the side of the road. They both stared down at the dead animal, their silence revealing the quick flow of their thoughts. They got back in the car and drove away.
    The night sky over the sea, illuminated by the hiding moon, glowed in the grey mist. The seaward clouds cloaked the galaxy from sight, returning their minds to the here and now, to life, the thing that matters only. They were alone on the road. The coast was theirs, the marvellous world around them, brimming at oceans edge. The headlights of the car were being studied by the birds in the sky riding down the dark road, swinging down above the electric headlight beams to investigate this unnatural thing stalking the marsh. The two men in the car drove on in silence. They had survived. The storm came rolling over them, the rain beat down on the windscreen, and nature, the sea, the sky, the rain and the wind, went on behaving as though they didn’t exist. They tingled to be alive.
    Rain was seeping through the broken windscreen as the front left wheel hit a pothole and they bumped and lurched violently making Wilko’s neck spasm in agony. He muttered to himself. He took the pain. He knew it was nothing compared to what was to come if they didn’t get rid of the body. Their minds now had a steely focus. Once the body was in the sea their trouble would end. Their worries would be over. Jock Cooper hadn’t even been reported missing. Nothing on the news. The police were nowhere to be seen. If the body was swept away by the ocean and devoured by the bottom feeders, they would be home and dry with only their consciences to trouble them, which wasn’t any real danger at all.
    The rain quietened and the forest gave way to barren scrub. They both looked up out of the windows and saw the parting of the clouds revealing the glowing white disc of the moon. Wilko slowed the car and dimmed the headlights. When he was sure there was nothing in their way he turned them off. In the far distance the faint outline of the twelve apostles signalled their destination approaching. The giant cylindrical rocks worn through eons by the punishing waves seemed strange and lonely. They had been forged by time, and birthed by the undying sea.
    “Fuckin’ bonza.” Said Daz. It was the first time he had smiled in a while. They took a moment to appreciate the spectacular view, surely one of the rarest on the entire continent, and then trundled on down the vacated road, towards the cliff.
    They took the last turning and slowed the car to a crawl. The headlights were off but there was still enough moon light to navigate. They parked the car next to a grass knoll about fifty metres away from the edge. Daz turned the engine and lights off and they sat there for a few moments in the hope the rain would pass.
    “Where did you put the weights?”
    “I already tied ‘em on. Don’t worry we’re strong enough. Come on. Let’s get a move on.”
    They got out of the car and were greeted by a sweeping drizzle, not the heavy battering rain of before. Wilko opened the boot wide and they both looked down at the rolled carpet, with a pair of black shoes visible at the end. Daz took out a Stanley knife and began to saw at the duct tape. Soon the carpet opened and the lifeless corpse of Jock Cooper was revealed, his eyes open, with an eerie, surprised expression on his face. They both were able to ignore it, because of contempt. Daz was tempted to spit on the body but held himself back. “Focus. Focus.” He said to himself, and himself alone.
    “What are we going to do with the carpet?”
    “Cut it up and burn it.”
    “Right-O.”
    “Get his legs.” Wilko reached down, obeying the order. Daz threaded his arms under those of Jock Cooper and they headed out towards the cliff with their heads tilted down. The wind was whipping up strong enough to give them the feeling it was raining from the ground.
    The cliff was giant. Not as high as the Cliffs of Moher, or the cliffs of Dover, but high enough to put the fear of God into them both. Both of them were scared to look over the precipice. As they approached the edge, the wind came up again and rain began to beat down harder than ever. Maybe nature was trying to stop them. Maybe the wind and the rain did know after all. That’s what Wilko thought as he trudged to the edge with the body, slipping on the muddy, rain sodden grass. It was Daz who was terrified of heights though, but he was the one who did the killing and he was the one who had the idea to throw the body off the cliff and into the sea.
    “Nearly there!’ Shouted Daz through the howling wind and rain. Their hair and their clothes were already soaked through after a quick two minutes. There was a slight incline rising up towards the precipice and as they reached it Wilko lost his grip on Jock Cooper’s legs and they fell, splatting into the muddy earth.
    “Fuck’s sake!” Shouted Daz, his voice carrying on the wind. “Careful ya fucking dumb cunt!’
    “Don’t crack the shits, I’m fuckin trying alright!!”
    “Fuck I got blood on me daks.”
    “Burn ‘em later.”
    “Ah me fucking neck! Cunt.” Wilko had dropped the dead legs hard into the mud, the pain in the muscle in his neck was too much to bear.
    “Come on, lift! We’re nearly there!” Shouted Daz. Wilko straightened up his back as the rain beat down on him and the pain subsided enough to grab the dead legs and lift them back up. On they went in the dark and rain.
    The wind was coming at them so hard they had their heads bent down towards it like they were pushing in a rugby scrum. The wrath of the storm had no mercy. When they were about ten metres from the very edge, they both lay down and began to roll the body. The wind felt less fierce on the ground but they could feel the wet cold mud and grass soaking through their shirts. As the dead body rolled over, the dead arms of Jock Cooper kept getting stuck underneath the weight of his body. The eyes were now closed as if he were sleeping drunk, getting rolled into the bed after a long night.
    The wind abated as they got the body to the very edge of the cliff.
    “Alright!” Shouted Daz. “After three, push as hard as you can!! One, Two…. Three!!” And they both simultaneously launched the dead body off the edge of the cliff into the crashing sea below. They both lay there motionless for almost a minute, experiencing an emotion not unlike a mountaineer at a summit. They had no words. It was done.
    “Look over the edge.” Said Daz.
    “Get fucked! You look over.”
    “Fuck that mate.” The wind was blowing so hard it felt like it was pushing them towards the precipice.
    “Let’s get the fuck outta here.” Said Daz, keeping his vertigo hidden. They felt the rain again and crawled backwards on their bellies before they stood up, turned and started running back to the car through the night tempest, shouting and cheering and jumping for joy as they went. Daz had taken his shirt off and was swinging the waterlogged garment around his head, laughing the relief of the prisoner freed. They jumped into the car, turned the engine on and sped away down the back roads and country lanes that led to Melbourne.
    The body of Jock Cooper fell lifeless from the edge of the cliff. Down it dropped. Fifteen metres below was a ledge the size of a living room. And there the body landed with a quiet thud, made silent by the storm. It bounced slightly forward coming to rest at the edge of the promontory, his left-hand peeking slightly over the edge as if it were a man clinging to the side of his bed. And there it stayed on the ledge, twenty metres above the sea.

    *

    Almost two weeks went by. Early in the morning Noel Manning and his son Joshua got in their trawler and headed up the coast towards the Twelve Apostles to see what the fishing was like, as they had a couple of times a week for the past few months, concentrating their work in the waters to the west. It was a calm, beautiful sunny morning and the white horses were resting. They went at a steady pace of eight knots, with the nets strung out behind them. They sailed a couple of kilometres from the coast most of way and then turned starboard to see what they could find in shallower waters. Noel turned the engine off and they bobbed a hundred and fifty metres or so from the land. Joshua’s keen eyes spotted it first by chance as he glanced up at a flock of seagulls swooping to feed on the cliff. He saw what he correctly thought to be a human hand, dangling.
    “Dad. Can ya see that?”
    “What?”
    “Up there on the cliff. Is that a hand?”
    “You’re havin me on.”
    “Look.” Noel went in to the cabin and fetched a pair of binoculars that he used for birdwatching. He stood there on the deck and pressed his face against the eyepieces. It took a few moments to get the binoculars in focus against the edge of the cliff and he tracked the ledge from right to left. He paused as his eyes and brain joined. He put the binoculars down a couple of inches and then back to his eyes in disbelief. A human hand and a denim shirt cuff dangling over the grassy lip.
    “Alright I’m turning the boat around. Get on to the police.’ He told his son.
    That afternoon a police helicopter swooped in and identified a body on the ledge and before nightfall it had been recovered. Daz and Wilko had stripped the body so it took a while to identify the body, but Jock Cooper was a well-known face around Melbourne and had been reported missing less than a week after his disappearance by his girlfriend Tammy. The cadaver had been partly eaten away by scavenging birds and his remains were a disgusting sight to behold. Tammy had to identify the body and was left a traumatised landlady in Alice Springs.
    The forensic team discovered the bullet hole almost immediately and a murder investigation was underway that night. Almost two weeks had passed by but the crick in Wilko’s neck was still giving him jip. He was still holding his neck in his hand as Daz switched the TV on and slumped down on the sofa next to Wilko with a can of VB and a lit cigarette. It was a news story saying the remains of Jock Cooper had been found on the ledge of a cliff near the Twelve Apostles in Victoria. When Wilko and Daz said ‘cunt’ in unison, there was a kind of musicality to the syllable.

    – –

    Feature Image: Richard Mikalsen

     

  • Poem: ‘What comes to mind in Ireland’

    What comes to mind in Ireland

    What is black? An absence of light,
    the cassocks of parish priests,
    dark peat in an Irish bog.

    What is brown? A leather belt,
    decaying plants, veins of iron in stones,
    the layered bark of a log.

    What is grey? Lowering clouds,
    skies threatening rain over windswept water,
    the speckled muzzle of an old dog.

    What is silver? A crucifix round a neck,
    handcuffs and shackles, thirty shiny coins,
    a flash of light through heavy fog.

    Feature Image: Daniele Idini

  • Poem: Vitruvian Woman

     

    Vitruvian Woman
    For Laura
    A Poem for Halloween

    Svelte limbs, aquiline and flow, her enjambment;
    The whole pelvic girdle hypnotically balances,
    Famously compared to a serpent which dances,
    And which has all full-blooded heterosexual males entranced…!

    And, there you have it! The Feminists declare,
    “No more male gazing here!”
    Where are we? How did we get here?
    Whatever happened to coup de foudre, colpo di fulmine ?

    It was a Friday night, I had been sitting, drinking with colleagues,
    When you entered the public bar dressed in your finery;
    The cream- coloured micro-skirt, the flesh coloured tights,

    The pliant leather of your black knee high boots!…
    Colpo di fulmine!… my ass jumped off the bench, reflexively!
    We have known each other now for 25 Halloweens.

    Feature Image: Norbert Szomszéd

  • The Ghost in the Garrick

    Richard Midwinter arrived early at the Garrick and on entering the theatre was struck by a large eighteenth century painting in the foyer of a man with his arm around a stone bust of Shakespeare. Quite a striking image, he thought. Midwinter, himself an actor, stood for a moment staring at the playwright, in the embrace of the famous child of Thespis. Shakespeare had inspired, and fed, more than one generation of actors, and the fact there has been no better writer of the inner life of the mind gave the painting an extra gravitas. “His shadow casts no end. Or at least, no foreseeable end” he said to himself, echoing Jonson. He recalled what one of his teacher’s had told him at drama school ‘you don’t read Shakespeare, he reads you’ and smiled to remember it.

    He stared up at the silent painting for a while, somehow caught in its net. The actor in the painting was David Garrick, for whom the theatre is named. He knew that David Garrick had been famed for developing a new, more natural style of acting which relied on authenticity and emotion. He had revolutionised the theatre of his day. Midwinter took in the face in the painting, the large brown eyes and a faint flair of the nostrils around the noble nose, two maverick souls of the theatre joined in perpetuity, and he wondered what it meant to be a theatre man in those half-remembered days.

    The actor turned and walked down the staircase to the stalls where he entered the auditorium by the stage. There was nobody there. He had the strange feeling he was being watched. Maybe by someone hiding, or maybe by the theatre itself, who he always saw as a kind of ghost, and said so often. He was surrounded by invisible remnants again. He looked up and saw the theatres balconies adorned with golden cherubs with their cheeks puffed (possibly to give those on stage enough wind for their sails? He asked himself) and he wondered about the things they must have seen, the changes they had registered and the applause they certainly echoed. He sighed and then climbed back up the stairs to get a drink. The audience was beginning to arrive in earnest downstairs. Gin and tonic in hand, he decided to explore and went up the carpeted staircase to the grand circle, the highest tier of the theatre, where, finding himself alone, he looked down on the quiet, empty stage.

    The safety curtain was still lowered. He thought back to the time he had acted on that very stage many years before. It brought back an avalanche of memories. He knew the Garrick theatre well indeed. As he looked down at the stage, he remembered hearing the theatrical story that the term ‘break a leg’ isn’t referring to the breaking of a human leg. It refers to a mechanism in the old days by the stage which lifted and lowered the curtain called ‘the leg’. If the performance pleased the crowd they would shout for the curtain to be lifted up and down, cheering the actors back to the stage for more applause. Through incessant lifting and lowering to placate the ecstatic crowd ‘the leg’ could break through overuse. Hence, ‘break a leg.’

    Midwinter sat down in one of the comfortable red chairs, resting his empty cup on the floor and slowly closed his eyes. When he opened them moments later, he was full of alertness. And that was when he saw it. An open door and a dimly lit flight of stairs that seemed to be inviting him to approach. He walked over slowly and when he reached the doorway he looked around. Now was his chance to explore the old theatre. He reckoned he could claim ignorance if he was caught by one of the members of staff and say he was lost. As if some strange force had taken over, he found himself walking up the staircase and soon he arrived at the top, in a long Victorian corridor. The wall paper, the carpet, the light fittings, everything spoke of a bygone era. There were ornate silver gas lamps decorating the walls. He felt a dim glow of adrenaline as he looked up and down the corridor and made the decision to turn right where there was a door at the end and a flight of stairs. He walked down confidently and then suddenly, and without any warning, all the lights turned off.

    He stopped still where he was, motionless in the pitch black. He thought he had made a bad mistake coming up here, that maybe he was indeed being watched, and turned to go back down the way he came. In the darkness, he put his hand out to feel the wall as he couldn’t even see his quick moving fingers an inch in front of his face. He carried on walking with his left hand dragging the wall but when he looked back, the staircase he had come up wasn’t there anymore. He began to distrust his senses. He put it down to faulty depth perception and continued on his way. He looked ahead and at the end of the corridor a light came on behind a closed door and a rectangular beam of white light shone out at him. A moment later the lights flickered back on in the corridor and the door at the end swung open.

    Standing there in the doorway was a man dressed in a smart grey three-piece pinstripe suit with a lemon-yellow tie and a top hat in his hand. The man instantly reminded Midwinter of the face he had seen in the painting downstairs. He stared at his face intently and could have sworn it was the face of David Garrick himself. The moment filled with strangeness, so he put it to the back of his mind. The man in the doorway had a large but well-manicured moustache and was leaning on a smart black oak walking cane. His brooding dark eyes fixed on Midwinter’s. ‘Come in’ said the well-dressed man ushering with his hand for him to approach, ‘we’ve been expecting you.’ Midwinter looked around, confused as to how the man knew his name. He looked him up and down and immediately noted the man was wearing spats as he was encouraged into the office. The man sat down behind a fine desk and began to speak in an excitable, frantic way.

    “Wonderful play. Extraordinary. This man Wilde really has captured the imagination of the public. Maybe capture is the wrong word. Stoked perhaps, will do. The new one. Marvellous. Just marvellous.” Then he began to sing in a low, in-tune, baritone ‘come into the garden Maud, I am here at the gate alone, I am here at the gate alone!” And he became sentimental with emotion. Midwinter became bewildered by this man who was finely dressed, but, to him at least, evidently as mad as a carrier bag full of spiders.

    “Are you talking about Oscar Wilde?” Asked Midwinter, bemused.

    “Yes! Of course, who else could it be. Perhaps the other Irishman I suppose, Shaw, we have his new play ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession, showing here at the Garrick you know.”

    “Yes. I know. New play? I don’t….”

    “What do you think of it?”

    “What?”

    “The Wilde play”

    “Which one?”

    “Which one? The Importance of Being Earnest.”

    “I liked it, but then, I only saw the televised version.”

    “Televised? What the devil is that?” Midwinter knew something wasn’t right. The man was obviously playing games. He thought perhaps he had been hoodwinked into an elaborate practical joke. Midwinter played along to see where it would go and said,

    “The actors were good I remember. Anyway, sorry who are you? And why have you brought me here? I was just………….” Said Midwinter before the man behind the desk cut him off.

    “Dalliard Talinsky. Welcome to Infinity and the Abyss, that others call our theatre.” He stressed the word ‘our’ with theatrical zeal. He put out his hand and when Midwinter shook it, he felt that it was icy cold. “I am the manager here at the Garrick. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” He sat back as he produced a cigar from a silver box on the table. “I have brought you here Mr Midwinter to discuss a proposition. You are an actor. And, well, I need a theatre person you see.”

    “Who told you I was an actor? I don’t believe we have met before.” Midwinter became suspicious.

    “Well. I have my sources.” Midwinter looked around the room and back at Talinsky. His intrigue outweighed his confusion and the misapprehension he was feeling began to dissipate.

    “You invited me to talk. Should I have ran?” The question revealed a cunning in Talinsky’s smile but he stayed silent.

    “Why I am here?” Asked Midwinter.

    “You are here because I need you to bring the real world some news.”

    “The real world?”

    “Yes. The real world. The world out there. As I said, this is infinity and the abyss. You are no longer in the realm of the living.” A light flickered in Talinsky’s dark brown, softly devious eyes. The room took on a silence that discomforted Richard Midwinter. He looked Talinsky directly in the eye and held his stare. He wondered what kind of man he was.

    “What do you want me to tell them. The real world I mean.’ Midwinter sensed that Talinsky thought he was trying to catch him out.

    “I need you to right a wrong. I need you to expose an injustice. I need you to……shall we say, liberate redemption. Then, and only then, can I be set free. I have learned many things in my time here. Many things indeed. If you live forever, a century is the blink of an eye.”

    Midwinter responded with silence.

    “You are my way out of here.” He paused and leant back in the chair, naturally at ease. “How long have you been involved in the theatre?” Asked Talinsky.

    “All my adult life.” Midwinter’s response was prompt.

    “Ah. Then you will know P.T Yardly.”

    “I can’t say that I do.”

    “What! You don’t know Yardly?”

    “I believe not.”

    “Well, I’ll be damned. How strange. Yardly is a real theatre man. Yes wonderful. He has a genius for crowds. For the Zeitgeist. He knows what the people want and gives it to them. Hit show after hit after hit. It seemed he could do no wrong. He had been an actor himself, then a director, but it was in the production of plays, that was where his true talent lay. He was my inspiration, in many ways.” Talinsky picked up a large crystal lighter and lit his cigar, producing an oblong smoke ring with his initial lug.

    “I might as well come straight out and say it.” Said Talinsky. “I am unable to leave this theatre. God knows how I have tried. A century has passed me by. Maybe more.” Midwinter let out a short sharp burst of laughter, thinking he was joking.

    “It’s true.” His mood took on a sombre tone. “I have been confined to this theatre for over a hundred, long, dark years. It is my limbo. It is my purgatory. And now I wish to leave.” His face became veiled in a deep sadness.

    “This is nonsense.” Said Midwinter “I am the one that should be leaving. I’m going to go now. Goodbye.”

    “Go ahead, if you must.” The look in Talinsky’s scrupulous eyes changed, as if some dark brooding force, almost malevolent, had been unearthed inside his electrified expression. Midwinter stood up, perturbed by the mad intrusion, but when he turned around he saw that the door he had entered through had completely disappeared, replaced by gold and black wall paper. The two of them were in a doorless, windowless box. He span around and saw that Dalliard Talinsky was still sat behind his desk, but now with a red crow standing upon the upraised forefinger of his right hand.

    “What is this? What’s happening? Who are you?!” Demanded Midwinter.

    “I told you. I am Dalliard Talinsky. I am the theatre manager here. Imprisoned for forgotten years.” Again, the face of David Garrick, who he had just seen in the foyer below came into focus. The large brown eyes that could suddenly switch from doleful to sharp, to elation to melancholy, with a deft control.

    “What do you mean you have been here for a hundred years. Have you lost your mind?! Then let me ask you this. When were you born?”

    “I was born on the fourteenth day in the month of May, in the year of our Lord 1845, in the Oblast of Ukraine.”

    “What is he talking about?” He thought quietly. “You look less than 50!” He said.

    “Well guessed. I just turned 49. My word, is it that year already?” Thinking he was in the clutch of a con trick Midwinter’s mood changed, as if he was about to be robbed. He began to feel the sense of dread a child feels walking up the stairs having turned off the lights below, and the sensation something or someone, is creeping behind, following up the stairs, and through the house, and becoming too scared to turn around. Wondering if Dalliard Talinsky might be trying to do him harm, he became hesitant to move to see indeed if his eyes had deceived him. The pull was too great and he looked again, and again no door and no means of escape. He jumped up and threw himself against the wall frantically feeling for the door edge with his finger tips but found nothing. He was trapped.

    Reason took hold in the panic of the moment. Perhaps Talinsky was the only way out. Midwinter thought if he tried to harm Talinsky he could jeopardise his chances of escape. Been here for a hundred years?! The man was mad. Talinsky hadn’t moved from behind his desk, but now the crow was standing on his shoulder, and had changed colour, to an emerald green flecked with cloth of gold. His eyes, now full of malice and cunning, fixed on Midwinter with an expression of absolute seriousness. Midwinter saw his struggling was no use and stopped dead. Then he turned around, out of breath and shaking. Moments passed by and he calmly sat down with his arms rested on the arms of the chair. Looking again at his face, Midwinter thought Talinsky could be the devil himself, and a great sense of unease went through him.

    “What do you want with me?”

    “I told you. I need you to escape.”

    “You are making no sense at all.”

    “I repeat myself. I am in limbo. WE are in limbo. It is where you are now. The incredibility of my story doesn’t make it less true. What’s wrong? It’s as if you don’t believe me.” The flame of his lighter turned bright red, then green, then back to the yellow of a normal flame. Midwinter closed his eyes hoping this action would be able to tell him whether or not he was hallucinating. Whether he was away with the faeries, in a weird land of dreams. When he opened his eyes. Talinsky had disappeared. Midwinter was alone again. His neck twisted sharply and he saw the door that he had entered the room through had reappeared.

    “Thank God.’ Said Midwinter. He stood up and turned the door handle. He expected to see the corridor that led back down to the theatre, but when he opened it there was only an infinite blackness. He looked down and saw that there was nothing under his feet. The walls of the room had evaporated. In this impenetrable dark there was no floor or ceiling, no up or down or left or right, only darkness. Not even starlight, only black.

    Then suddenly in the near distance, a candle flame appeared. It glowed brightly, but all it illuminated was the tall wax candle that had breathed it into life. Midwinter stood in oblivion. Then, through the black void, in the dim candle light, a human face appeared. At first it was just a shape, a vague image. He rubbed his eyes. Quietly, he watched the scene, by now accepting that reality had abandoned him. Like the calm man at the gallows, he had excepted his fate. Perhaps he had gone mad and this was the asylum. It was Talinsky’s face appearing, and he began to speak.

    “Please” said Talinsky. “Let me introduce two of my old friends. My old friends of the theatre. They have been here even longer than me.”

    Two men appeared from nowhere, magicked out of the darkness. One of the men was fat and rosy cheeked, the other thin and gaunt. The three men stood for a moment in silence watching Richard Midwinter. Overwhelmed by peculiarity, by questions, Midwinter was rendered unable to speak.

    “Let me introduce you.” Said Talinsky. “This is the well-beloved Sir John.” The fat man took off his hat in recognition, out of which protruded a large peacock feather. “And this is………well. We just call him The Prince around here.” Two benches appeared, one from a tavern and one from a church. The fat man sat on his, and the prince lay down on his, with his hands behind his head. Midwinter looked at them both closely. All three men had the same face. The same face as the man he had seen in the old painting, in the foyer of the theatre. The three men were all David Garrick, and David Garrick was all three men. He was playing them all at the same time, as he would characters in a play.

    “Are you David Garrick? The man in the painting?” Asked Midwinter.

    “I have been may people in my time.” The thin, gaunt man replied. Then the fat man said “Let us to the singing.” He looked at Sir John and knew for certain that even though much fatter and fuller of face, belly and arse, they had the same eyes. The eyes of Garrick. The man in the painting.

    “Sweet prince” said the fat man suddenly bursting into life. He turned to Midwinter. “And what manner of man are you? You drink? I hope.”

    “Yes. I drink.” Said Midwinter. More candles came on suddenly, glowing the blackness of the void.

    “Nonsense young man, you’re still breathing, aren’t you? You look as fit as a fiddle to me, and my eyesight is better than most men’s. Yes! We have heard the silence at noon, master Midwinter.” The thin gaunt man said nothing as Midwinter turned his gaze on the prince but it seemed he was thinking deeply about something that had nothing to do with any of them. A conversation with himself, obscured, hidden in the dark recesses of his mind. Talinsky looked Midwinter in the eye and paused.

    “Well, what do you see?” Asked Talinsky.

    “Three men in the darkness.” He replied.

    “I see infinity.” Said Sir John, smiling.

    “And I see the abyss.” Said the Prince.

    Talinsky looked at Midwinter with an expression of great hope that emanated from his whole face through the prism of his eyes.

    “Help us.” Said Garrick in the unison of three men. The characters all spoke as one voice.

    “What can I do? For Christs sake!” Shouted Midwinter.

    “You have done enough. Now I must go.” Said Talinsky. ‘To return to the world. Thank-you, Mr Midwinter. You have set me free. But now you must stay. You must replace me, until you find another. Goodbye Midwinter. And thank you for your sacrifice. You shall be remembered in heaven!”

    “I’ve been tricked! You have tricked me!” Shouted Richard Midwinter overwrought with emotion. And with that Dalliard Talinsky smiled back at him and disappeared from sight, melting out of existence, out of the void.

    “Infinity or the Abyss. Infinity or the Abyss!” Went the two characters, singing together in a loud whisper.

    “I am infinity.” Sang the fat man.

    “And I am the abyss.” Whispered the Prince.

    The Fat Man looked at Midwinter straight in the eye and said,

    “Just as there is a heaven and hell on earth, so there is in all the creations of man, including the hereafter. We are the masters of punishment and reward. We are conscious of our own souls. If there were no humans in the universe there would be no God of humans. Thus, and therefore, you have a choice. Infinity?’

    “Or the Abyss?” Said The Prince.

    “You live with us now.” They said together.

    “No. No!” Shouted Midwinter in fear.

    The fat man began to laugh and dance in the blackness of the void. The prince raised his bony finger and pointed it at Midwinter. “I am the abyss!” Said the sad faced prince. “And I am infinity!” Said the laughing fat man. “And you are an actor! We together make up your soul, so don’t be afraid.” The jolly fat man pulled a fiddle out from nowhere like it was a magic trick. They sang in perfect harmony. “We are your soul” and then they turned and walked away into the distance of the black void singing and dancing as they went, even the sad prince. Midwinter found it impossible to move as if an invisible force was holding him down. He held out his arm with an open hand shouting to the actors who didn’t look back from there departing performance.

    ‘No…No…No!” Said Midwinter until the blackness turned to the longest night and he cried himself into a deep sleep.

    Midwinter woke up and found himself still in the infinite black void. He looked around and saw that he was alone. Totally alone in black, endless nothingness. This is what hell is like he thought, and he remembered something his devoutly Christian mother had told him when he was a child about hell not being fire and brimstone, but simply ‘the absence of God.’ In this place he could feel himself walking, and running even, but there was nowhere to go. Sitting and standing felt the same. Minutes turned to hours, hours to days, days to months and months to years. A thousand years could be lived in a minute and a minute in a thousand years. He thought, what is there new to be imagined, now all I have is imagination? His imagination would fly, pen-less. He felt a sudden, unexpected joy. And then, miraculously, he heard a woman’s voice penetrating the void. It came to his ears like music.

    “He’s waking up!” She said.

    The blackness of the infinite nothingness was obliterated by light, it’s brightness fierce enough to make him squint hard. Richard Midwinter blinked rapidly, the watering of his eyes coming at him like overflowing cups. He was alive and back in the world. He was home. He looked around as his blurry vision cleared and soon realised he was in a hospital ward, lying in bed. He looked around and saw all the other patients lying in their beds, waiting patiently for something to happen. He saw the voice was coming from a nurse standing over his bed.

    “What happened?” He asked through blurry eyes.

    “You have been in a coma. You fell into a coma sitting in the theatre.” Said the nurse.

    “How long have I been here?”

    “All in good time. Doctor Garrick will explain everything, don’t worry, he’s here now.’ Said the nurse.

    “Who?” Said Richard Midwinter bewildered. He looked up with his eyes becoming wilder as he acknowledged Doctor Garrick standing over him, those deep brown eyes full of thinking, full of cunning, smiling down from the bedside.


    Feature Image: The Garrick Theatre by Katie Chan

  • Poem: September is Here

    September is Here

    and I want to feel the tingle
    of autumn over the horizon.
    The palette of skies, laying themselves
    nightly before my eyes like Turkish
    carpets in the souks of Istanbul.
    I want to anticipate the nuanced change
    of the leaves, delicate as if the maestro
    himself draws them into the rising
    crescendo of the orchestra – slowly,
    softly, instrument by instrument,
    tree by tree, colour by colour
    until the cymbals clash and the double
    basses vibrate their music through
    the woods and lanes.

    I want to watch the swallows gather
    on the telephone wires, line upon
    line, their eyes on horizons I cannot
    even imagine; waiting for the wind
    to call them, the stars to set their orbit
    across the world.
    I want to see the berries fall
    ripe and rotten into the hollows of
    the hedge, so unseen creatures
    can have their bacchanal,
    their last fling of the  season, then
    reel home through the undergrowth
    replete and tipsy, to sleep the winter away.

    I want to walk to the shore and hear
    the waves rising up in anger,
    beating back the beaches,
    sucking up the stones and hurling
    them at the cliffs in fits of
    equinoctial rage.

    Most of all, I just want to feel
    vibrancy, not deal with autumn playing
    fast and loose – doling out fitful sun,
    welters of drab rain; gales that blow
    and pause and then roar in again, battering
    my garden of deceased flowers and sad
    stalks bent double with despair,
    rotting where they fall. And all
    in light that barely lifts its head,
    light that is just a brief apology
    for being short and low and hesitant;
    no longer flaring with summer’s lusty
    fervour – breaking in and waking me
    at 4am just to whisper sweet nothings
    through the chink in the curtains.

    I want something other than
    the torpor of half-arsed endings.
    What happened to mellow fruitfulness?
    Give me liquid golden light that makes me
    look up, look out; something to cradle
    in my mind through winter. Give me
    that wild transition I know this season
    keeps secreted up its sleeves, to
    compensate for all the untold things
    summer always snatches as she leaves,
    like a jilted lover.
    So autumn, please, no fickle
    promises of crisp, cold days that don’t
    materialise. Step up; pull your finger out –
    go French – Italian – go Portuguese;
    bring on the colours and the lights,
    run your hit show again. You can do it.
    Don’t tease, don’t cheat by sneaking limply
    past, skulking like a thief between the hot
    dog days and winter’s sharp retreat.

  • Poem: The Revolutionary

    The Revolutionary
    Andrée Blouin, 1921-1986

    A hungry child can never truly sleep. In the orphanage
    for sinful offspring – our fathers white, our mothers
    African – the nuns were merciless, severe. I shook
    by night inside a narrow, iron cot, aware only
    of my body’s hunger, a heavy shadow
    shuttering my limbs. I prayed for pity
    in the nothing-blue that slowly turned
    to grey – another dawning misery. My later
    love for liberty began beneath the weight.
    Softened after rain, I ate the red-mud bricks
    that walled the yard in fingerfuls, to ease
    the ricket-sting within my belly. Eventually
    I sickened; a nurse and officer appeared
    to valuate my case; the reverend mother
    eyed me down. Knuckle-tough, the holy
    order washed their fists of me, like dirt.
    Cruelty, you see, ensures reiteration:
    the orphanage and colony were images
    of one another, their legatees incurably
    suspicious, incapable of kindness
    to the Africans they ruled. Sickly, sore,
    dispatched away, my life began again
    in freedom: mending coverlets and dresses
    for imperious françaises, plantation wives
    intent on delegation. I worked, in truth,
    unendingly, determined to survive:
    my labour served me well. When
    Guinea first, and then the Parti Solidaire
    demanded heartened soul, unstinting
    dedication, day and night, I gave my all,
    humming like a never-empty engine
    of vivacity for Africa, my nation. Long
    debased, the cresting Congo filled
    my veins with euphony and joy – a song
    of jubilation, born of fire, tears, and blood,
    now winnowed to an ache. I strode as one
    among the risen generation. Possessed
    of an uncommon poise, Gizenga always
    seemed at home in quietude: the Belgians
    feared his silence, knowing him a strategist,
    percipient and fierce; he listened like a man
    in meditation, untroubled by the fray
    to which he nonetheless devoted
    both the clarity and passion of a saint.
    Struggling together, comrades in the fight,
    I considered him a friend. And dear Patrice…
    as if in fever, I recall his grace, the easy
    trust he held in those around him, and
    the smiling way he seemed to bless
    the people he addressed, gliding
    lightly when he stepped, alive to hope,
    assured of the integrity of service
    to the cause: the Congolese empowered
    by the Congolese themselves, the copper-
    hearted mercenaries tossed into the tide.
    A dignified idealist, he radiated calm.
    Assessing the equation, the European
    lackeys sprang a trap: the president
    renditioned, his body would be cut
    in blocks, and dipped in acid
    swilling in a barrel. They burned
    the living trace of him to vapour, ordering
    the rest of us to leave or disappear.
    They kept a single tooth for decoration.
    His dream and he are vivid to me still.