Chrissy Banks and Antony Owen (from the IS&T archives) for Holocaust Memorial Day

by | Jan 27, 2025 | Featured, Poetry

 
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep
 
 
 
Goodnight moon, goodnight stars,
goodnight cherry, pear, apple tree.
Goodnight pond, stop wriggling, newts,
stop zipping the water, water-boatmen.
Goodnight, glossy horses on the hill,
rabbits in the field, white owl,
hungry and flying still. Goodnight
pigeon, head tucked under your wing.
Goodnight cars and vans on the road outside.
Time to shut off engines, grab some rest.
Goodnight Danny, Dylan. Put away
your books, leave those other worlds for now.
Goodnight Lenny. Still your football legs,
calm your curious senses. Lay your head
on the pillow and sleep. Goodnight little Cece.
Take off your princess dress, your crown.
Can you feel a pea under the mattress?
You’ll never tell if you don’t lie down.
Good night children of Syria, Gaza, Ukraine,
Jerusalem. Close your eyes if you can.
The stars shine on you all.
The moon sees everything.
 
 

Chrissy Banks is a former therapist. She lives in Exeter, runs poetry reading groups and co-hosts Uncut Poets. A collection, The Uninvited, is available from Indigo Dreams and a pamphlet, Frank, from the Poetry Business.  Shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, 2021 and third prize-winner in 2024, her poems appear in many journals and anthologies, most recently Penumbra and Frosted Fire.
 
 
 
Song for a yellow star belt
 
 
 
In the square
they are beating men to classical music
last year they danced in this spot, the same children watched.In the square
a local orchestra kneels before its composer
he is made to throttle the defiant celloist with piano strings.

All things pass,
ignore the old shoemaker covering the breasts of his dead wife,
in five years, he will watch from the patisserie as kids chalk hopscotch.

All things pass,
like the twitching general damned by the sleight seamstress.
He thought she closed her eyes but she snared him in a blink shot.

In the orchestra,
a solitary flutist set free an excerpt of the murdered crescendo.
I swear a whole crowd gathered in the square to hear it soar like black fireworks.
 
 

With five collections of poetry focusing on conflict Antony Owen is a well respected writer known for investigative poetry which took him to Hiroshima in 2015 to interview atomic bomb survivors. His subsequent collection, The Nagasaki Elder (V.Press) was shortlisted for a Ted Hughes Award in 2017

‘Song for a yellow star belt’ was first published on 27th January 2020. ‘Post-Atomic Glossaries: New and Selected Poems‘ was published by Broken Sleep Books in 2024.