Untitled IV by Rabeya Jalil. Image Courtesy: ArtChowk Gallery
Reveille
Flat shoes hushing
into the emergency ward
since no good doctor
worth her salt
wears heels these days
at daybreak at noon
the sun’s feeble shafts
step into the room
Rolling news
We were right all along
society composed
not to think of itself
we saw it commit harm
no concern for another
the fuel’s gone
burned the best of ourselves
we were right all along
A town called Carresse
I had been living there
for so many years
just off the elegant
main squares
how long I laboured
O I saved steadily
for a more grand place
in the country
Lock down
As the cast-iron crash
of shutters closes
I learn life and death
with my neighbours—
drill as per instruction
my black-gloved thumb
snug in the recess
of a mercenary gun
~Â Martyn Crucefix
Martyn Crucefix has won numerous prizes including a major Eric Gregory award and a Hawthornden Fellowship. He has published 7 collections of poetry and numerous acclaimed translations. His translation of Rilke’s ‘Duino Elegies’ (Enitharmon, 2006) was shortlisted for the Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation and hailed as “unlikely to be bettered for very many years†(Magma).
[…] written precious few ‘political’ poems (four short pieces have recently been published here: http://journal.themissingslate.com/2015/03/10/four-songs/). But I did manage to write about the Bamiyan valley (eventually published in 2004, in An English […]