PATRICK WILLIAMSON

PATRICK WILLIAMSON

Flight

Walking across a deep black

chasm, walking on a narrow

bridge the width of a plank

a child sitting on my shoulders;

the bridge sways sometimes,

its ropes disappear from my hands:

the landlip seems to get no closer

I carefully walk ahead I turn to see

a giant snake's tongue behind, lashing

out to flick a fly from the web,

these cold eyes that bleed you dry,

this is our flight for survival

these thoughts torment our kind

that promised land infinitely distant

these crowds, the looks people give,

disappearing to a ghostly skyline

these inches of mud, this mirage

such thoughts crushing my mind,

who can I talk to, be my confessor,

who will banish death from the highway,

rout and give chase, confuse

the hounds and soothe the dark hues

before they are tossed aside

talk to the reeking stricken shrubs,

as the pitch twists round our feet,

one more effort before the wire,

and you shall find rest with me.

 

9/86

Cracked curved glass breaks the reflection

of the warehouse roof; the dirt encrusted cold

is my home, patchwork slumped in a damp corner.

As secure from the rain as a country barn

until boots clump the split boards,

a light searching shadows as I sleep,

ripping me like in a film of an official raid.

Into the grey morning; hair full of dirt,

arms & senses taut with implied violence.

The axe rips the door & my frame is shattered;

it's wartime once again in Lebanon, in London.

But adrenalin moves me on, another brave world awaits.

The buildings broken, the water cut into strips,

with trust gone there are only sharp eyes and one's wits.

 

Desert

The desert’s swathes reddening silence

as soldiers torch the village, shred

our nomads’ carapace in the wind, ash

drive us from the land, to the sea.

We have no more shelter, we end up

as man and every beast thrown to the fire,

they slaughter the well with dynamite,

roll heads around with the tips of boots.

But let the murderers drink under the elder.

stoke campfire embers, we shall prevail,

our country is not here, amid the remains,

it left in the wind before we did, and sun set.

We rise up and scatter our seed, on pastures

new, the road twists round our feet,

we find a resting place on the plain.

You ever seen a country migrate? We have.

PATRICK WILLIAMSON

PATRICK WILLIAMSON is an English poet and translator. Editor and translator of The Parley Tree, Poets from French-speaking Africa and the Arab World (Arc Publications, 2012) and translator notably of Tahar Bekri, Gilles Cyr, Guido Cupani and Erri de Luca. Most recent poetry collections in English-Italian with Samuele Editore: Traversi (2018), Beneficato (2015), Nel Santuario (2013; Menzione speciale della Giuria in the XV Concorso Guido Gozzano, 2014). Founding member of transnational literary agency Linguafranca.