Ulysses Loses Identity
When a local mistakes your oar
For a fan that winnows the grain
You won’t have to search anymore,
May your spirit abandon pain.
Yes, the locals will take your oar
For an artless winnowing fan!
But until you have reached that shore
You’re no one in a foreign land.
All the words you mumble, they crush
As the waves embracing the stone
All you see is a dumb mirage
Trapped and wrapped in the shadow zone.
Should you ask? Do you have a right
For a shelter you’ve craved and missed?
There’s no refuge for you tonight,
And the sky no longer exists.
There’s no sky, in a strange delight
You still feel that the stars are there
Just bled grey, they bled black and white
There’s no roof: all you do is stare.
There’s no roof, yet there is a hope
For a gentle and warming flame |
For a house you can call your home
For the people to say your name
Yes, some man will mistake your oar
For a winnowing fan one day
And you’ll know: it’s the end of war
And you’ll know: there a place to stay.
Polina Cosgrave is a bilingual poet and Arts Council award recipient based in Ireland. Her debut collection My Name Is was published by Dedalus Press. Her work has appeared on TV, radio and in numerous journals and anthologies.
Note: first published by Dedalus Press in 2019
Battersea
Through the kitchen
a small flat roof
enclosed by walls, bins,
overlooking backyards
along Queenstown road,
where a blackbird sang
each evening.
Gold beak spilling song
across the gardens
and into the street
as the 137 and 345
carried workers home,
packed in yellow fog
behind wet glass.
And this was where
we carried her
up the stairs,
unafraid of
another new thing
we’d found.
Trying her voice,
how it sounded
as she moved her head,
her stare came straight,
dark eyes deep
with unformed life,
a lake of rain
reflecting me whole.
The room
with a mattress,
red hot stove,
rattling sash,
TV in the corner,
where we sheltered
in the middle
of everywhere.
Chris Hardy has lived in many parts of the world and is now in Sussex, where he is secretary of the Chichester Stanza. He is a musician and poet. His latest collection, ‘Key To The Highway’ was published by Shoestring Press.
Rehomer’s prayer
Bring me the wobbly, the scabby, the beaten,
the oldies, the lost, the could-have-been-eaten,
the wayward, the strays, the nightmares to tame,
the cringers, the timid, the ones with no name,
the mangy, the lousy, the missing-one-leg,
the dirty, the stinky, the too-tired-to-beg,
the crooked, the toothless, the eartorn, the humped,
the knobbly, the limping, the recently-dumped,
the feral, the fearful, the head- and hand-shy,
the last gasp no-hopers, the ones who might die,
the three-homes-already, the stubborn returners,
the deafened, the sightless, the never-will-learners,
the tucked-in-the-corner, the sodden in pee,
bring me all these ones – please, bring them to me.
Di Slaney lives in in Nottinghamshire where she runs Manor Farm Charitable Trust and Candlestick Press. Widely published, broadcast and anthologised, she was the winner of The Plough Poetry Prize 2022. Her collections are Reward for Winter and Herd Queen (Valley Press).
Note: previously published in Reward for Winter (Valley Press, 2016).