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previously published in
www.insomniacathon.org,
in
collection Passio, Flarestack, 2006, ISBN
1 900397 90 0
:
Passio (extract:
parts I to IV of XII)
My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
I
From
this station I see a wildness of sugar
and
green-crossed shutters,
sweet
as nightingales burning in forests,
shaded
blue of diamonds on water,
a
hot, dancing whore with promise of succour.
II
My
God, my God,why
when
a pine compromises the ocean
with
hair of a woman and teeth of a minotaur
with
sugar-cubed offerings of rooftops and swallows
tonguing
beauties and ants on balconies.
A
harbour lies like a woman's thigh
with
boats moored against strong limbs of land.
III
Skiathos,
with your cigarette ends and bins
and
your succulents battling with Archangels and Moses.
Ela
ela lama sabacthani!
Your
aerials of electric goodness and rapid voices
pick
their way through groves of oysters.
Dionysos
sits laughing on top of the clock tower,
his
hands haul the bells of the hours that haunt.
IV
With
oleander beside me and Thanatos before me
a
surge beneath and a belief in hunger and hope.
Pines
are not pines here on this island,
cicadas
are not crickets, but a calling of madness
that
licks the land like a cat in the morning.
Your
white-tongued ships
slip
into the Aegean
like
a lover's tongue easily sipping
the
juice of his honey
like
a bed in the sea and a fish and a moment
and
a cranking of chains and Poseidon is calling
my
god Thanatos,
my
god Eros.
In
pink confetti and bins overflowing,
in
the soft slip-slop of sandals and moorings,
in
the slow, sway of gulls following behind me
waiting
to pick at my bones and my eyes.
I
have touched the ice beneath the heat
of
this island that will always haunt me
in
its lamplight and flowers dried grass
shrivelled
life in a land like a woman's
hazed-blue
gown of evening.
In
Dimitrios' hand on the tiller of my soul,
I
cry for the armies that meet inside me
like
a mad dog howling as it snaps at the ocean
Geraldine
Green
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