New Poem from Patrick Woodcock
from a forthcoming book: You can't bury them all (ECW Press, 2016)
The Forgotten of Binavy Tour…
By Patrick Woodcock
Underwater, if violence is water,
within the zephyr if the ceiling has fallen,
there is no colour or coloured deception
just beige in our blood and beige in the air.
The old school has one wall, falling and gabled.
The house of my father sits somewhere near here.
Most doors are sun-ravaged, of odd bonded metal;
the irrigation pond is where men cool their beer.
The cemetery’s headstones are scattered,
misshapen - some are as small as the palm
of my hand. Smaller than infants, some
battered, some hidden, as if none ever mattered
or walked on this land.
The Forgotten of Binavy Tour…
By Patrick Woodcock
Underwater, if violence is water,
within the zephyr if the ceiling has fallen,
there is no colour or coloured deception
just beige in our blood and beige in the air.
The old school has one wall, falling and gabled.
The house of my father sits somewhere near here.
Most doors are sun-ravaged, of odd bonded metal;
the irrigation pond is where men cool their beer.
The cemetery’s headstones are scattered,
misshapen - some are as small as the palm
of my hand. Smaller than infants, some
battered, some hidden, as if none ever mattered
or walked on this land.
posted by John Stiles at 4:23 pm
2 Comments:
Thanks John, Just a quick note. This poem was written after visiting my friend's father's village in the Kurdish North of Iraq. Everything was as described. Binavy( Bin - Av )is Kurdish for 'underwater.'
Was that Silaman, your friend from Haliburton in London?
When I come up for air I'll put the other one up there.
Memories of Irving Layton: Love Poems, shipped in a full size crate, still property of the French School, no doubt. Owww n ye-oowww
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