Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Tears scorched me as I wrote alone, what was I,
speaking like this with

year upon year quickening the lost faces, and from the
windows came

glory, dull golden light, benches and tables all about
the windows mirroring the underworld. And then came
Porporas, and Kintaxis, and Markos, and Gerasimos,
dismounting one after the other,
dark hoar-frost on the horses and the day
slanting through the quiescent air, Bilias came and Gournas
gypsies imprinted on the dusk, and Fakalos, they held
mandolines, flutes, guitars,
the soul leapt at the sound, the house smelt everywhere
of rain and wood, and when,
only when they’d lit a great blaze to warm themselves,
then only did I call to them.

There came Sarris, and Tsakonas,
Farmakis, Toregas, and

Face pox-scarred, bitter, clawed the ground with his nails
by the castle at Akova, he bled, spoke of pain and debauchery,
so dark was he that I became afraid, ran stumbling off down
the hill.

We took the low road, ashes everywhere, iron, burnt earth,
a black X painted on the doors told us death had passed that
way, days and nights and the machine-gune reaping
and you would hear oh! and nothing more. And many

came. Before them came Tzannis, Eleminoglou, Papparizos,
followed by Lazarithis, and Flaskis, and Konstantopoulos
- no one can say in which church they were sung, in what
ground buried.

Then pulled him out of the ditch, as I held him he gave
the ghost up in my arms, and some weeks later his wife
smelling of grass, at noon deep in the garden telling her
of his death, the full dark body whimpered on my chest,
at night the forests and the roots would glow, for years
the voice would not die and

Moon, moonlight, close days, winter building itself a tower
of stone, sunless and hard, I heard

the first knock and the second knock, at dawn they smashed
down the doors and dragged us out breathless, ‘wait here’,
and what a day was dawning!

There came old men and children.

How could they survive in such ragged clothes,
how could the children grow up in such horror?
The old men creaking, taller than their bodies.
And the children
clutching the axe, the knife, the hatchet
contempt and menace in their eyes, nor did they speak.

Ditches, wastelands, mothers in black wailing, whom did you
kill, whom did you kill, how many have we killed?

So much blood and then we came across Louka’s hands in the
gully, and others severed at the wrist

after months on the run, here today, tonight elsewhere

murderers, narks, thieves and fornicators, soldiers, policemen,
householders and shopkeepers

and many others riding on time’s back and from among them
ruin’s daughters stepped out, hunger and fever, set up
against the wall, an ill wind blew. And there came

Fanni and Litsa sweet-apple trees, Dana came and Nana, slim as
the wheat, Eleni’s maydenhair still green,

laurels, myrtles, wild vines
small lost rivers.

And one morning

that morning when I woke the tree had turned all green, I
loved it so much that it rose to the sky.

And birds arrived, birds of sunlight and joy, filling the place
with colours and feathers, perwits and felderels and other such
fantastic species, skimmers and calicocks and morrowdims, and

gifts of the Lord, merry birds, constant slashes in the blue
sky. And among them came

Yannis Makris, Petros Kallinikos, Yannis the lame.

We sat on the embankment, Rouskas took out his pocket-knife
and cut down the young grass.

And mist over the plain. And you could hear spring coming, a
door whose wood smelt of the sky.

Then came the days of forty four
and the days of forty eight.
And from the Morea up to Larissa
deeper yet into Kastoria,
a black pestilence on the map,
Greece’s breath rasping -
we held a count that Easter in deserted Kozani,
how many stayed on high, how many travelled on
stone, branch and hill,
down the dark river.

Prosoras came holding his broken rifle,
Alafouzos, and Bakrisioris, and Zervos
approached the gathering. Look, I shouted, and we looked:
a flood of light, the fruitful sun a monument
to the obscure dead. The years have passed, I told them,
our hair’s turned grey.
Tzepetis came, and Zafoglou and Markoutsas
they settled themselves on the bench
and Konstantinos nursed his foot at the end.

The voices gradually grew calm.

Gradually, as they had come, they disappeared,
took to the valley, scattering in the wind.
For the last time I watched them, called to them.
The fire sank to the ground and from the windows came -
How just a single star can make night navigable.

How in the empty church is the unknown dead anointed
his body laid to rest among the flowers.

Drawing - Ian Robinson