Bosnian Girl

When they had finished with her and with her mother
she climbed a tree and hung herself – a girl
in a red sweater that her mother had knitted.
This is one front page image I remember
from the Srebrenica massacre.
If we could live inside the memory of ‘Once
there was a village that was undisturbed’,
by now she’d be a mother knitting sweaters
for her daughter. I can picture my fingers
unbuckling the belt she slung around a branch
and seeing her slim bare legs swinging down.
Feet on earth again, up she springs and runs.
 

Joan Michelson

published in Poetry News, newsletter of The Poetry Society, Spring 2012
(originally titled Muslim Girl)

 
back to top

 

Wife

I thought that you had died. Were dead.
So I set off to find a house
for just us two, your wife and child.
 
I reached a village built on rock.
that faced a seething wind-wracked sea
and climbed past jumble to the top,
 
and found you there alive and flush
opening a door for me.
‘Come in.’ you said, ‘Come meet my love.’
 
You led me up a spiral stair
inside a tower made of stone
with slits for light. And it grew dark,
 
too dark to see your other wife.
But I could hear and feel her breathe.
‘And so,’ I said, ‘you’ve a new life.’
 
Then I was taken with the thought
that you had found the place we sought
when you and I shared dreams and talked.
 
But you – and I should have known
the soul that wanders finds a home –
wordless, returned me to the road.
 

Joan Michelson

in collection Toward the Heliopause, 2007, Mad Jock Publishers,
ISBN 978-1-9064390-1-9 (US: Poetic Matrix Publishers, ISBN 978-0-9827343-6-0)

 
back to top

 

Lecciones

Teaching EFL I listen mostly.
Something learned the year we lost Allende.
My class was filled with refugees from Chile.
 
The students had a lot of things to tell me
about the world they’d made – their new democracy.
Teaching them, I learned to listen mostly.
 
Pinochet sent his henchmen for Allende,
the ‘comrade President’ who refused to flee.
My class was packed with refugees from Chile.
 
They hid the worst. I helped with phrasing mostly,
though facts leaked out about the Juncta’s ugly deeds.
In London teaching, I learned to listen mostly.
 
I heard that Victor Jara went down singing
his last song – this with both hands broken.
I lived that year as if my home were Chile
 
and I expected Britain to protect me
until our land was freed of A. Pinochet.
My class was filled with refugees from Chile.
Teaching EFL I listen mostly.
 
 
EFL – English as Foreign Language
 
In 1973, Salvador Allende, President of Chile, and the singer Victor Jara, died in the coup staged by General Augusta Pinochet.
 

Joan Michelson

published in Poetry as a Foreign Language, (ed. Martin Bates),
White Adder Press, Edinburgh, Scotland 1999

 
back to top

 

Sleep

We were young. No one bothered
much with clothes. You tried a few
other girls before we met
but none passed the test you set:
what mattered was how you slept.
 
With me, you professed to rest.
So the marriage we grew into
which failed so many other tests
and tested us until the last
lasted until death.
 
And now undressed and wrapped in sheets,
I move from bed to bed to couch
as if reproached by sleep itself.
I lie awake and watch the dark.
I watch a thousand things unseen.
 
And when the cat returns at dawn
and he curls up, I think of us
as once we slept. Then I could rest.
 

Joan Michelson

in collection Toward the Heliopause, 2007, Mad Jock Publishers,
ISBN 978-1-9064390-1-9 (US: Poetic Matrix Publishers, ISBN 978-0-9827343-6-0)

 
back to top