A disused children’s playground
the Carousel and Ferris Wheel,
where the seesaw’ed
when the peace thawed
Over there a shell hole
fifty meters from the breakfast buffet
The Al Deira Hotel fly’s freedom flags
but no castles in this sand today
The crippled body bent and cast
like a post-card from the edge
the broken promise clear at last
just another worthless pledge
© Wolfgar 2/2018
He found a stone in-between the fences
matted with blood and hair,
across the wire blackened canisters and rubber
which came from here but landed there.
There’s a fat old sloth slumped by the checkpoint
his weapon slung like a child’s toy,
he drags laboriously on filterless tips
and has no concern for a wounded boy.
From the tower, cameras scan the terrain
everything on CCTV,
while the man with the stone in no-mans land
ponders, which side of the fence should he be?
Ramallah 4 Feb 18
© Wolfgar 2/2018
On this my first night here the house bristles with life around me,
I listen to competing calls, whose unfamiliar tongues command.
Streets kid’s playing football, Manchester and Arsenal below The Mount,
The fragrant waft of Orange Groves, my senses overload.
A red sky wipes itself to black, Cross and Crescent bejewel the night,
feline skip invaders pick the flesh off lesser lives,
they see me come and slow my step, but they belong, not I,
unflinching from their well marked place, it’s I who pass them by.
Yesterday I left my mark
today my mark breaks virgin ground,
I lay my head at last to rest
and drink in every new-heard sound.
©Wolfgar 2/2018
On this my last night here, the house settles still around me.
I listen to the street with its familiar hum,
the foot-fall of people I’ve never seen but know instinctively
as they pass then move along.
Silver shards of moonlight pierce the slatted blinds
my friendly wild eyed fox sits beneath the window,
does he hear me breathing? imagining his movement,
he skips and slinks back into the starless forest.
Tomorrow I’ll be far from here
in a velvet seamless night,
my bed an empty impressed tomb,
My soul flying towards some other light.
© Wolfgar 1/2018
On the brown bracken hills blown and stripped dry
lived beasties and birdies all under one sky,
they scratched and they fluffed their feathers and furs
though they knew they belonged they knew not where they were.
While below in false order lived beasts who stood straight
who fenced themselves in behind stone-wall and gate,
they had names for their buildings their streets and their towns
they had rulers and workers and faces with frowns.
And it seemed to the beasties and also the birds
that they lived just fine without borders and words,
so they cherished the soil and they worshipped the air
and they all lived together without knowing where.
© Wolfgar 1/2018
Not a single pin hole pierces the sky
tonight its black as the flat-topped-sea
the gulls have migrated to where fishing boats lie
and the harbors a haven if only to me
There’s a hum from the tavern and a welcoming glow
it pumps at right-angle’s the beer in full flow
though not grape or the barley could sate me tonight
for its you that I thirst for to bathe in your light
As the cold of the wall creeps to my core
I long for the mornings reprise
and give thanks for the days the two of us saw
and throw curses at nights such as these
In some long enforced good-night
the darks cold lips kissed sacred ground,
unmoved the earth froze ghostly white
not able to recoil or speak she lay bereft and still,
while nature through that sunless night
bestowed ill deeds at will,
there too the pale daughter, enslaved and cruelly torn
accepted fate as if by rite,
and hushed her breath till dawn.
(Dialogue kicks in after first few bars)
Through a tunnel carved in dead mens bones
the living went to hell
the stoker fed the flaming mouth
as the hammer struck its knell
The landscape flattened beneath the plain
its rivers turned to dust
strange tepees ripped ragged by blackened rain
sit fragile on the crust
Passengers cling to souls long sold
confessions too late to speak
they will not endure to grow ever-old
for they were not the meek
As downward-downward still they surge
descending into fire
the darkest of them all are purged
as hell-flames venture higher
He hadn’t been ill in the clinical sense
but he had destroyed his soul in search of it
He had chased it across deserts and
through
Labyrinthine
Streets
through whore house windows
with no socks on his feet
The Policeman who found his wrung out corpse
rifled his pockets to confirm his thoughts
He had a tattoo of a dog on his upper torso
and the key to a deposit box taped in his shoe
a picture of a child’s gravestone
and inside a spent wallet
a
picture of
you
On the doorstep you crumpled at the finality of words
a kindly neighbour made you some tea
he’d be sorry that it broke you the way that it did
but happy to see you set free
The pale Sun clambers up St Andrews steeple
for a moment it trembles like a spinning plate
appealing bells ring out its rise
as the pagan sphere ascends through immaculate skies
dog walkers desecrate the sacred stones
their canine companions water old bones
the ancestors wetted they wander off home
while the bell ringer ponders the silence alone
In the vestry the Vicar prays for a calling
the congregation is shrinking his sermons too boring
the ladies bring jam and sing out of tune
and he fears that his Kingdom has Come far too soon
with so much to do before evensong
how can it be that these days seem so long
but still he will live out his life between bells
rewarded in heaven for this little hell
