Poems in his Pocket

     recalling Miklos Radnoti*
 
He speaks of single things:
of love for just one woman;
of countryside as homeland;
of one man’s separation
to incarceration, wire
and lacerated labour,
bombardment overhead.
 
The muffled word supports
one set of limbs, force-marched
out of step from camp to camp;
one bullet, from all others, just for him;
one mass grave for rag and bone;
 
and in his pocket poems
with six million voices
as individual as morning.
 
 
 
     * Hungarian Jewish poet interned in WW2 & sent to labour camps
 

Belinda Singleton

published in Orbis Quarterly International Literary Journal 154, Winter 2010,
ISSN 0300-4425 – Awarded Readers’ First Prize (joint), recorded in issue 155;
Highly commended in Torbay Open Poetry Competition 2010.