Category Archives: Old Day 01

Dispossession by Diana

The house is taciturn.

Secrets have settled under dust.

You left in the middle of December

leaving a mug of tea, a half read

magazine and washing up

shipwrecked in the sink.

The innards of the house lie in

piles outside the front door like

discarded offal.  The ghost of a

Brahms sonata sighs around the

dismembered piano.  Yellow crime tape

flaps in the wind like a Tibetan prayer flag.

 

I wish for a light at the window,

a steaming kettle,

singing from the bathroom

and a reason for your leaving.

Snail

Not for me the agonies of loss,
the wrench of leaving bricks
and mortar, ‘home’ since time began,
the tears of memory recalling
childhood bedrooms, garden swings,
now moving to the rhythms of new tenants
who redecorate, move walls, block chimneys,
make things theirs.

Give me the slip-sliding gypsy life,
crisscrossing the world’s trails
slowly with my family and friends
to find new pastures, juicy leaves,
the joys of infinite slime.

That City

This poem started life as a poem in Russian by Anna Akhmatova. I fed it into google translate and used the gobbledygook that came out to write the poem below. I have seen a real translation and it bears no resemblance to my poem. It’s a fun exercise though.

[line]

That City

My favourite since childhood
frivolled away my birthright,
or that’s how it seemed to me,
here, in the dead still of December.

The energy, sound of praying,
the grace of the first song,
all came so easily to hand
as if falling from heaven.

But all this invisible smoke
fizzled out in a hall of mirrors,
and I couldn’t get it back again.
Even the street violinist was no help.

I put it down to the tourists
who ransacked the place, stole its novelty
while I, sounding like a sleighbell,
listened to their weird lingo.

What happened to the wild freshness
that filled my lungs with joy
as each delightful century
climbed with me onto the porch?

[line]

Back together

Back together

Outside, none too sure.
Knock at the door,
ring on the bell.
Lips to the letter box:
“It’s me, let me in.
Please, let me in.”

Inside, something stirs.
Bolts drawn back,
key turned in the lock.
Door thrown open:
“It’s you, Come in.
Please, come in.”