Romulus 2018

Nicholas Pierpan, ‘THE SWELLS’.
There are houses even
now without a road, re-enclosed
by birch and maple.
They tempt us out on Sunday
past the far county
bends: a place to drink
in peace, see walls surface
within the oaks and brown ash.
A cry and we stop the Ford,
crawl out one by one
through summer undergrowth,
like savages gaining on
some lost and wounded beast,
last looks decide who goes
in first – makes sure we’ve found
the swells of an empty house
abandoned to the forest,
still sheltering dead
furniture, insides
misshapen by dust and
the shit of infinite mice.
We smash every
window in the place
and drink a toast.
*
Years later – Somerset,
England. No longer turning
vagrant corners.
I met you here, but
distance remains that
neither will ferry.
Visiting your kindly parents
we take a walk through nearby
woods, say little until a field
breaks up the trees: livestock’s
summer-refuge. Cattle graze
this shaded pastureland
and then a house appears –
farmer-like, familial,
but no road in any direction.
There is only the field, the trees,
that house, now mirrored in your eyes.
Tell me who lives in that place.
YASSER KHAN: ‘NOTHING IS HARDER ON THE SOUL,
THAN THE SMELL OF DREAMS, WHILE THEY ARE
EVAPORATING.’ - MAHMOUD DARWISH
(pen on paper).
(The title of Yasser Khan’s sketches are verses from poems written by the
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Their focus is the impact of borders on
the psychology of those who suffer. The face, the eyes, the atmosphere are all
expressive of the turmoil which manifests itself in a complexity of emotions
much beyond the capacity of language.)
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