Poem of the Month

A new poem will be placed here each month, usually from one of my published collections.

My poem for March 2018 is from my new collection The Museum of Truth (Melos) and it is called “Flood”. In the notes to the pamphlet I say that it was partly suggested by a famous sequence in Theo Angelopoulos’ film about refugees, The Suspended Step of the Stork (Το Mετέωρο Bήμα Tου Πελαργού) which shows the wedding of a young couple while they remain separated by a river which marks the border of Greece and Albania. It isn’t “about” that scene but something in it set me thinking and this is the poem that resulted.

 

Flood

Here is a man,

thinking of a woman,

wanting to bridge

the swift-flowing river

which is bringing whole trees

from a violent flood

in its turbulent water;

the roof of a house;

an abandoned car;

a terrified horse

screaming its pain.

The woman appears

on the far bank,

in a blue dress,

signalling her love

but he cannot hear her words

which the wind steals

so there is nothing left

but her silence

and her blue dress

and her eyes which say

that she would cross the river

if it could calm itself

after the flood;

that they would bridge

the swift-flowing water;

that they would join

like the two segments

of a sliced pear

someone has parted

with a clean knife.