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PHILIP
HAMMIAL
two poems
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FUMBLING
- Still fumbling for the right key
- as the door swings open. Mausoleum
- or brothel? The distinction
- seems irrelevant. I'm hungry
- & the chicken leg I'm offered
- is delicious. Haven't eaten for days
- but now I'm full, as content as a dog
- with a bone. Where to bury it? -
- under the pillow of my mother's bed
(may
- she rest in peace). There
- for a rainy day. Coming down in
buckets,
- a torrential downpour. It could be
Havana
- & the year 1958. It could be
Kathmandu
- & the year 1972. The distinction
- seems irrelevant. What matters
- is that I'm still fumbling with the
alarm
- as the door closes, deadlocked, &
the siren
- starts screaming. Is the code
- 1958? Or 1972? Or is it 1983? - the
truck
- leaving without me, stuck in this
village until
- the next convoy arrives in a month or
so, my wife
- on her way to Juba with two Swahili
drivers, Ahmed
- & Mohammed. Might as well
- make the most of it: a thick novel
- to read - Gravity's Rainbow,
- & a big mama from Somalia who
likes
- what I do with my tongue. Brothel
- or mausoleum? The distinction
- seems irrelevant.
-
-
-
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OLE HUSSARS
- Snow White adrift
- in the city of Yore, the who
- of her alias a consequence of
- unbridled accumulation - the greed
- of the Ole Hussars, champions once
- of that birth by dint of which we
found ourselves
- fully justified by a perfect alibi:
rocked
- to sleep by water lapping on the sides
- of an early 19th Century
French
- prison hulk, how could we have known
- who was born of & therefore in
- that shame & who not?
-
Ole
Hussars, men, each
- & every one of a piece &
surely trustworthy
- we assumed as we stepped into their
gondolas, were poled
- out into the centre of a busy river,
our delicate craft
- constantly in danger of being swamped
by the wake
- of passing barges piled high with the
dead, victims
- of some up-river plague, we surmised,
to be taken
- out to sea & dumped, no relevance
to us, just part
- of the passing show, as was our
mother, her pleas
- for sanctuary falling on deaf ears,
ours, slaves now
- of the Ole Hussars, who after they
have done with us
- will set us adrift in the city of
Yore.
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