The Destroyer

I am of the wind . . .

A wisp of the battering wind . . .

I trail my fingers along the Alps

And an avalanche falls in my wake . . .

I feel in my quivering length

When it buries the hamlet beneath . . .

I hurriedly sweep aside

The cities that clutter our path . . .

As we whirl about the circle of the globe . . .

As we tear at the pillars of the world . . .

Open to the wind,

The Destroyer!

The wind that is battering at your gates.

Lola Ridge

Flying to Italy

The Alps are a college of grand-

mothers in white caps. Massed

profiles rear up, as pure

as nuns’.

They dandle only the air

on their scalloped laps.

Clouds infiltrate

their knees’ blue valleys.

Closer they are all

mouth: discussing

the clatter of pilots out of tin

carrycots onto these ridged tips

that snap them up, teeth

needling the lovely boys, tongues

sucking the gristle off bones.

You could easily lose your heart

to these bad grannies:

they are so possessive!

They’ll cherish

the flesh of businessmen

better than any hostess, these

lipsmacking sisters; they’ll

teach young wives and other

survivors how to carve up

the sun-dried dead, and eat.

We scuttle past.

Now we’re only a glint

in their turquoise eye.

Patience is their vocation.

Michèle Roberts

holiday

on a crack of dawn flight

to another country, another tongue

and another culture

you are tired of the crick in your neck

the press of the seat in front of your knees

you want to be stationary

greeted by the same view from your window

for at least three consecutive days

but when you land

you are met with the joy

of unfamiliar streets and universal customs

a myriad of words for hello, thank you and sorry

are brief guests in your bashful mouth

as you walk round a grand fountain

framed in the dazzling green only

the utopia of scandinavia could offer

a conversation with an aunt

floats to the top of your mind

one in which she confided

she had never left her country

that all her other siblings had

never even left their village

and it’s all you can do

not to weep in the face of chance

and its callous scattergun hand

you vow to never take the miracle

of flight for granted again

but the tears do not stop

a kind fair-haired man stops

to survey the scene of you

and before you can look away

he asks in improbably perfect english

if there’s anything he can do

to help you

Vanessa Kisuule

The Bomber

White moon setting and red sun waking,

White as a searchlight, red as a flame,

Through the dawn wind her hard way making,

Rhythmless, riddled, the bomber came.

Men who had thought their last flight over,

All hoping gone, came limping back,

Marvelling, looked on bomb-scarred Dover,

Buttercup fields and white Down track.