The Children of Stromboli
are quick as hares in cane-beds, their bare
feet winged by Hermes; sure they can outrace
sluggish streams of lava, streak over red-hot coals.
Hounding the chypre and almond scent of fig trees
they split thieved fruits with dirty nails and, sticky still
with sweetness, scratch out mushrooms in the loam.
Abandoning the swishing swaying bamboo
to the sighing sounds of sea-wind, they race
down sullen slopes to black beaches, shouting,
scuffling over ashen sands to build –
not castles, but volcanoes. Moulding cones
with small and smutty fingers they stuff
craters with dry grasses, then, breath caught,
apply (forbidden) lighters, blow, bet cents on
which will burn the longest, whose
volcano flames the most.
The children of Stromboli play hide ‘n seek in
sulphurous caverns, make-shift lairs in
wombs of darkness close to the ticking, the
tolling, the heartbeat of the earth.. They are aware
but unbothered by the livid Cyclops underground
half-asleep in molten lava – half-sleeping, half-awake.
Out of Africa
We fly into Africa on an all-in,
They boat out of Africa all in.
We’ve taken a taxi to the airport.
They’ve jolted a week in a scorching truck.
Our plane is pressurised.
In the truck it was 50° C.
Our aircraft is the latest jet.
Their craft is a leaking boat.
The stewardess serves drinks of choice.
Their water bottles run dry halfway.
We are coach-borne to 5 star hotels.
They are chucked into the sea still far out.
We see rain forest, silverbacks, mountains.
Their shore is a lava cliff, wave swept.
Not many see it.
(published in Private Photo Review, Autumn 2008)
The Madonna of the Snows
Only the stream gurgling under its shawl of ice,
a woodcock’s chucking, the north wind’s suck and sigh
swinging cots of birch and pine. Her breasts swelled with milk
cold as her cradling; her tears were snowflakes drifting down
as though they might hush the bundle she rocked in her arms.
She hurried past the walls of the cemetery where the newly dead
were busy unmaking their bodies and those long gone
were shuffling and playing their bones. Lean dogs scratched
and scrabbled under the walls with frantic and frozen paws;
biting, tearing the bindings of the stillborn – the unbaptised.
The space of a breath, a moment slipped from time, a shiver,
a tear in death’s veil. A grace as small and soft as a whisper
she would never now hear. That was all she could, she would
ask for – was it so much to grant? A place for a babe to lie,
safe from dog, fox, badger – and man.
But the mother of stone on the altar was frozen in her own
and antique grief. She had lost her son to a god – what radiance
could ever again warm her heart? She mourned his firm flesh, his
carpenter’s hands, his voice in the dusk quietly speaking. No
god could replace his humanity. Her heart was crystal and ice.
The priest was waiting with his stoup of water, shivering
by the pool. The woman laid her babe on the step, lifting
the cloth from its face. Only the wind wailed thinly in the wicker
of branches and boughs; only icicles round the spring
reflected her in their sharp and shifting eyes.
The space of a breath. No grace that a god gives. The mother’s
gaze was fixed. And earth took pity where gods won’t: a vapour
rose thin from the spring and hovered over the baby’s lips
so it almost seemed to sigh. The priest hurriedly sprinkled the water
and muttered the words of a rite.
The babe in her arms again, the mother fell to her knees,
thanking the statue of stone; her tears falling at last.
The priest, too, was thankful; he could now bury the child
and – faith restored – return to a fire, a glass of red wine.
The earth went back to its dark sleep, cradling a warming babe.
from "Blood Line" 2007, Blinking Eye) | 
