These crows usually
Like nothing better
Than to fly
From house
Top to house
Top but most times they
Prefer to stay cackling
Out of the way high up
In the old bullet-riddled village
Clock tower that miraculously
Still keeps striking the right
Time of day—whenever
That happens, all common-
Place hell breaks loose,
And the birds scatter
Helter-skelter. That's when
I like to think the few remaining
Villagers old enough to remember
Flash back to those murderous
Three days of civil strife that sent
So many souls shrieking
To the depths of the underworld.
Just like their predecessors did
More than half a bloody century ago,
The birds soon return to the bell-tower,
Where they continue to crow.
Striking (puns intended) poem! Haunting and dark, sadly both local and universal. It is difficult to write a "political" poem that works. This one does!
ReplyDeleteThanks, John and you're right about the difficulty of writing "political" poems but not as hard as living in a place still haunted by such divisive memories and with monuments erected in honor of them--here I'm thinking of that gigantic marble cross on the way to Neochori which was built to "honor"the horrible events following the battle of Meligalas in 1944.
ReplyDelete