Cassandra Voices

Category: Poetry

  • Poetry – Mark Burrows

    The Resistance 

    I never knew what they really felt
    how they survived the one world
    we shared across layers of fear
    and indifference never grasped
    the bold grip of hatred that sears
    the eye and numbs the mind of
    the last shreds of decency never
    expected that the good would
    outlast all this in a world where
    the question of fair isn’t even
    mentioned in the interim report
    and could hardly imagine that
    despite all this greed would not
    have the last word in this life with
    its unspeakable joys and woes
    where the promise holds that
    the lost will somehow be found
    and the last impossibly first

     

    The Occasion

    —for Mark Jordan, with abiding gratitude

    What if beauty is a substance
    in this world of accident and remorse,
    finite and particular and dispersed
    like the sound of larks singing

    frivolously into the morning silences,
    regardless of audience or absence or
    any other need? What if our single
    purpose here is to seek what often

    falls into the crevices of disregard,
    gratefully reaching into the stream
    with dry hands and parched lips?

    And what if time is but the occasion
    for gathering these shards of loveliness
    into the heart’s hungry vestibule?

     

    The Work of Love 

    It is early, though the late night is still holding
    the long hems of darkness; dawn has not yet

    begun to imagine what the day might bring
    of shadows and of light, and those I love are

    still wrapped in the mantle of their dreams.
    But I am sitting here with a cup of tea cradled

    in my hands as I begin to bring forth the edges
    of a poem, drawing words and bits of song from

    the drifting play of dreams. And as I begin I’ve
    not yet made a single mistake; no word is out

    of place on the empty page, no thought has
    strayed into the cravings of jealousy or rage,

    and no good deed has been undone. It’s like
    this sometimes with art, as with the work of

    love, when the heart wakes to join the lark
    in her propensity to amazement and to song.

     

  • Poetry – Ben Keatinge

    Black Vulture

    You loom at Madzharovo
    then at Bosilovo
    roost at Kalanjevo.

    Black pilgrim
    cowl of the air
    crossing these skies,

    come, we are prone
    and torn, numbed,
    expecting your news.

    Cormorants at Dojran Lake

    The fisher Christs are drying their wings
    a great white pelican gawps
    and gives a wide September yawn
    a prudent heron heeds, and waits.

    The Tetovo Buzzards

    The Tetovo buzzards loop high and swoop low,
    they circle the plains across Tetovo,
    with the Vardar they bend, drift the ravines,
    wider and deeper, hunting in teams;
    the valleys are empty, the villages small,
    the fields unfenced and the minarets tall;
    did I hear one give a shriek-like ‘Shqip’
    when crossing the canyon next to Chiflik?
    Swinging from Saraj to Kumanovo
    they reckon the wind, climb as they go.

    Pelicans at Prespa Lake

    Some pelicans festoon the bay
    like summer boats at Howth or Bray
    here to forage, to fish
    and fly back across the spit
    like local geese as day grows late
    in Prespa or at Donabate
    who swoop on Sutton, or on Rush,
    then tail it to Achilleios.

    Benjamin Keatinge is a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of English, Trinity College Dublin. His poetry has appeared in Orbis, Eborakon, The Galway Review, Agenda and Flare and is forthcoming in Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets (Dedalus Press, 2019). He is editor of Making Integral: Critical Essays on Richard Murphy (Cork University Press, 2019).

    Pictures by Hristo Peshev. Bulgarian conservationist and wildlife photographer who works as field work co-ordinator at the Fund for Wild Flora and Fauna, Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria specializing in vulture conservation.

  • The Sunset Drive-in Cinema

    I watched the flamed sky
    as the earth rolled back
    and made it seem
    like the sun had set.

    ‘When I was just a little girl…’

    I remember waiting
    for the dark to start
    as we sat in the car
    at the drive-in cinema.

    My mother loved Doris Day.

    Strange business on earth
    all the cars kept apart
    by a long wood fence
    with the whites to the right.

    ‘Que sera sera, what will be…’

    Separate development
    they called apartheid
    and I developed separately
    determinedly differently.

    ‘The future’s not ours to see…’

    I watch the flaming sky
    as the earth rolls back
    and makes it seem
    like the sun is setting.

  • White Woman Brown Heart

    Even the color of my skin belies who I really am.
    Always on the outside looking in . . . even with my own kin.
    Blonde and blue-eyed born into a brown world,
    I came to see myself through their eyes, their skin, their pain.

    White woman brown heart, I am.

     

    I didn’t understand when sister girl said it wasn’t fair
    that beauty and smarts went to someone like me.
    Doors so freely opened were closed to her, I could not see.
    Because sister girl, she looked the same to me.

    White woman brown heart, I am.

     

    Yankee white daddy my mama said is how I came to be.
    They spoke his name first on that fateful sixth year.
    My names were nothing then and they are nothing now.
    Cause I’m a nobody traveling through life on an inner dark sea.

    White woman brown heart, I am.

     

    Tethered by psychic roots running so deep that
    it matters not where I stand on the grid of space and time.
    I’ll never understand the difference between them and me,
    or why we only see what we see in the face of humanity.

    White woman brown heart, I am.

     

    The soul is what bends and shapes what we’re supposed to be . . .
    And that difficult repentance the poet confessed long ago.
    That’s what kept my days from always ending in that dark inner sea.
    And a whispered thank you for all that ever was and ever will be.

    White woman brown heart, I am.

    Nance Harding is a Texan living in New Orleans. As a psychoanalytically oriented consultant, she uses archetypal pattern analysis and creative mentoring to assist adults during critical transitions requiring transformative change.  She writes poetry and flash fiction.

    Feature Image: Marina Azzaro

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  • Carbon Negative

    One fine day all this will burn
    Strange but true

    The blue woods of Oregon
    Silver snakes of her rivers
    Her dark lakes gone like steam

    Something will come
    A hammer at high noon
    To stove in this huge porcelain egg of a world

    Our hopes were only ever
    The white wisps of clouds
    Full of love and silence

    Let them nestle there
    Snug as shadows
    In the shoulders of the hills

    We are men
    We ride high
    Brains blazing on jet fuel.

  • Visita de obra

    No soy yo quien atraviesa
    estos valles prendidos de ocres,
    ni este el tren que me lleva
    de un lugar a otro lugar.

    La tierra se retuerce
    mostrando sus costuras
    y de las balsas de agua
    emana un vapor sin voz.

    Los túneles construyen el paisaje
    con su lenguaje de fronteras.

    En el vidrio reflejado,
    superpuesto a los adolescentes chopos,
    a los desnudos almendros de otoño,
    a las hayas, sabinas y retama,
    al maíz con sus artríticos penachos secos,
    mi rostro descansa entre los otros.

    Por delante del dormido campanario,
    de la vejiga de la fábrica,
    de los afilados dedos de los álamos,
    otros ensayan a escuchar
    el rumor de un tren que nunca se detiene.

    Site Visit

    It is not I who traverses
    these valleys hung in ochres,
    nor this the train that takes me
    from one place to another.

    The earth writhes
    uncovering its seams,
    and from the water reservoirs
    a voiceless vapour rises.

    Tunnels build the landscape up
    with their language of borders.

    Reflected on the glass,
    superimposed over the adolescent black poplars,
    the naked almond trees of autumn,
    the beeches, phoenician junipers and brooms,
    the cornfields with their arthritic dry cobs,
    my face rests amongst the others.

    In front of the sleeping bell tower,
    the factory’s bladder,
    and the sharpened fingers of the poplars,
    others are rehearsing to listen
    to the whisper of this train that never stops. 

    Alberto Marcos is an architect and designer who lives between Madrid and Hampshire. He has published several books of poetry:  “Mujer desnudando el Mediterráneo”, Calambur, 1999  (UPM Poetry Prize), “maya”, Pez Privé, 2001, and  “NSEO, la urdimbre del mapa”, in-constant, 2014. He has been inconstantly working on his new collection of poems, “School Run”, since then. Hopefully it will soon see the light.

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  • The Firstborn

    _          I thought that I would read the beginning
    _                      Of the last gospel, but
    _                      The book fell open at
    The beginning of the first, my thoughts misdeeming
    _                      What I needed to write this poem,
    _          But the book satisfying them.

    _          My intention was to write about
    _                      A father and a son
    _                      Hand in hand upon
    A curving shore, a memory I doubt,
    _                      But fitting image for
    _          All such memories I here recall.

    _          Those early summer evenings spent
    _                      With my dad on that outcrop
    _                      Watching peregrines drop,
    Or in the woods, off way-marked paths, intent
    _                      To find the fabled stand
    _          Of Weymouth Pines, which we, at last, found.

    _          Our lingering at Mickla Bridge,
    _                      Discoursing about Yeats,
    _                      As the sun politely waits
    To set behind the bluing fields’ high ridge.
    _                      My making for my first son
    _          My arm a pillow to rest upon.

    _          But while I thought on these things, behold,
    _                      An angel of the Lord
    _                      Appealed to my words and implored,
    All things are created through the Son, that child,
    _                      Conceived of the holy ghost,
    _          Praised suddenly by a heavenly host.

    _          What have I written? And what have I
    _                      Imagined and not written?
    _                      And what remains unwritten
    And unimagined in this poem? Before I
    _                      Knew it, my thoughts were lost,
    _          Or found with child of the holy ghost.

    Edward Clarke’s Eighteen Psalms was published by Periplum Poetry in 2018. He is also the author of two books of criticism, The Vagabond Spirit of Poetry (Iff Books 2014) and The Later Affluence of W.B. Yeats and Wallace Stevens (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), and poetry editor Cassandra Voices. 

  • Forest

    Nightfalls.
    Creatures are on the move,
    Leaping, dancing, diving, digging, loving
    that’s the art of living, that’s the art of dying.
    Machines are slowing down
    Cars, trains, ships, aeroplanes
    I’m coming in now to land, from all those names
    the Pacific, the Wild Atlantic way,
    the Mediterranean, the Indian and Arctic Oceans
    the South China Sea, Caribbean, the Arabian Sea.
    Now I see it – the Irish Sea,
    the sea by my city where I was born
    Cities seems old when we are young,
    And young when we are old
    There’s always something left over from the past
    Which can turn out to be the future
    Reaching the exit doors to those bittersweet parties, it’s often like life
    People don’t really meet until they have to say goodbye.

    I want to wake up to something new
    I want to wake up to something old
    I want to go with you, I want to run with you
    Away from the city, away from the chatter
    And into the green land, into the primal wildness
    To every place we ever dreamed
    And every place we never dreamed

    ***

    To the trees, the trees, the trees, the trees, the trees
    the trees, the trees, the trees, the trees, the trees
    I throw my life to the trees, to the earth, to the breeze
    Come into the forest and relish the trees
    Lie down next to me
    Open up to this evolving polyphony
    Sycamores, Silver Birch, Oak and Yew
    Baobab, Jacaranda, Sequoia
    Hazel, Ash, the Weeping Willow
    Holly, Hawthorn, the Sumaúma queen
    Oh let us breathe
    These are my prayers in layers
    In words that burn all the thumping time

    Why do we walk deeper into the forest?
    Why do we walk deeper into the forest?
    I don’t know what nature is
    I don’t know what nature is
    So I’ll sing, yes I’ll sing it
    The plays, plots and ploys of living
    The plays, plots and ploys of dying
    There are so many days that have not yet broken
    There are so many days that have not yet opened
    I was rushing towards somewhere I always want to be
    I was rushing towards somewhere I always wanted to see
    Let us walk deeper into the forest
    Out here there are big trees
    Out here there are small trees
    Out here there are strange trees
    Out here
    These lands are lush and I was lost
    Big space is here and everything is clear

    ***

    Times of mass extinctions and the great shame
    I’m staying with the trouble
    I’m staying with the trouble
    Madness, machines, riverines
    Erething above ground in this book of breathings
    Sham or shunner in kicking time
    Neither beginning nor ending
    We are in the middle of things
    We are in the middle of things
    I exist only when I sing
    I exist only when I sing
    We are not insane, we are not insane
    We are not insane, we are not insane

    Why do you walk deeper into the forest?
    Why do you walk deeper into the forest?
    To dream, to dream
    This contaminating diversity reeling of cacophony
    “It is not down in any map; true places never are”
    The water of this face has flowed
    Let us go back into the trees
    Let us go back into the water
    Do you hear what I’m seeing?
    Listen to the sound
    Listen to the river
    Listen to the trees
    Listen

    ***

    Adrift
    in these ruins, we are all stories
    in the sticky jungle, there is no time, only dark thrilling space
    something in us is born, something in us remains,
    in the depths of dreams, and up there
    I say: “hello moon … hello sun and stars”
    childhood memories are returning
    did we reach that place?
    oh melancholy me, remnants of the gods, moods, sounds, shadows, oblivion
    a subterranean woman is at work: tunneling, mining, undermining
    I can see her with my theatre eye
    there are rooms filled with chords and sonatas
    there are fields filled with flowers and grasshoppers
    there is a girl who wanted confirmation and a boy who was afraid
    never before has there been such an open sea
    never before did I see so many trees
    the endlessness of the forest swallowed up my consciousness
    take me, eat me, drink me, drown me
    we are all strangers now
    we are all tyrants now
    we are all shamans now
    we are all charlatans now
    it’s all good. the animals are here.

    The Loafing Heroes: https://theloafingheroes.bandcamp.com/

  • BREXIT – A Poem

    Once I had finished it I didn’t understand my own poem,
    so how could you?

    There had been a moment when, possessed by a sort of deftness, I had made choices
    about matters such as line length

    but now all that had left me. I was confused.
    The intriguing question is what path led me
    from that bewilderment to my present mode of address.

    This is something which concerns you, so pay attention!

    In a very true sense it is your curiosity,
    which led me, like an umbilical threadworm,
    out of the labyrinth. And here we both are,
    blinking in the sunlight, a bit traumatised perhaps,
    attracting too many flies for our mutual liking,
    but here nonetheless, in whatever space this is,
    field or piazza, over which I am making this address,
    dear Ariadne.

    ­_                      Never doubt, I will come back for you.
    I see now what separates us is a slowly widening stretch
    of crystalline water. These islands are lovely and puritanical.
    They suit your beauty down to a T.

    I’m sorry, have I made a mistake about your name?
    Is this, strictly speaking, European soil?
    Anyway, I must be off.

    Wait for me!

    Alex Winter practised for many years as a barrister and now works in the field of psychotherapy.

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  • From Psalm 119

    Gimel/Retribue servo tuo

    O do well unto thy servant

    Vincible world, I see blown blossom
    hurled with the crumpled rooks before May’s
    impertinent, spooky breezes; newly-dressed
    branches rattled already before
    counter-prevalent and centrifuge gusts.

    Vincible earth, no stranger to kenosis, then;
    it’s what you do. I can’t arrive at saying it.

    I’m lip-deep in the unsayable, (don’t you know?)
    dealing out, let’s say, deuteranopic cusses
    to a space and time all-too-green, in fact,
    to observe Coverdale’s green observations
    in the bright shadows of Hebrew’s plenty.

    Lip-labour for our vincible domain
    in the light and shadow of opulence.


    He/Legem pone

    Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes

    Prayer’s printed page whitens out of seeing;
    self-divesting, and on the run, leaked
    in a voiced extinction, even as the fire
    among the thorns,
    _                            its bright dereliction
    without self-favour, but spoiling
    immarcescibly into faith’s erasures;
    a pale palimpsest, even Cranmer’s gift.

    My page is blinded. Its tongue is stolen.
    God’s syntax is glass, o! cerulean
    titmouse! It’s entropy’s hard vacancy.
    Don’t be caught,
    _                            songbird iconoclast!
    not in time’s continuum, but before
    untimely Abraham. Good philosopher,
    teach us the way of thy statutes.


    Yodh/Manus tuae fecerunt me

    Thy hands have made me and fashioned me

    It’s the waiting. Waiting for the form
    of a hand, in likeness as the appearance
    of fire, from Ezekiel’s amber chambers.

    There in the nonsense, today, of my roustabout
    apple trees and oak, the willow next door,
    though not the form of a fiery, friendly hand.

    It would all be too easy. There’d be no need
    for Empson’s monstrously clotted language –
    antagonyms of faith in affliction.

    Swelling with the skittery breezes, willow
    is no open hand but clutched then hurling,
    yes, a likeness as the appearance of fire.

    And, monstrously clotted, Ezekiel wavers
    into afflicted speech, and this faithful, fiery hand.

    Sections of Psalm One Hundred and Nineteen have also found a home in Scintilla journal. Poems from An Atheist’s Prayer-Book are forthcoming at Litter. Reviews have appeared at Litter, and at Stride. A PhD, Natural Strange Beatitudes, can be found at www.pearl.plymouth.ac.uk. Jonathan Wooding has spoken at academic conferences in Plymouth, Oxford and York on the poetry of Geoffrey Hill.