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Fuir et se cacher

by Richard Georges
6 January 2025
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Close your eyes   I see a woman unwrapping a papered past
an open window   the growing garden   a hawk looping the
heavy air    how come your bones    so filled with lightness
hold you up      like a scaffold?

Do not make sound roar like the ocean does at the insolence
of land grasp the hems of your mother’s skirt dry your eyes
in me how the salt looks a tributary an ancient route back
to your fertile home?

Build a barrow with your hands drape the mound with your hair
make a room in this house make room in this house
besides the bones of this ivory city how can you know
your people without love?

Close your eyes but do not close the body against the air
of the day it’s heavy acetylene wind the window frames the world
Eden shrinks itself into a disk and Eve rises anew
casting down the fiery sword.


Illustration ©NR Visram

About the Author

Richard Georges

Richard Georges is a writer and editor in the British Virgin Islands. His most recent book, Epiphaneia (2019), won the 2020 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and his first book, Make Us All Islands (2017), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His second book, Giant (2018), was highly commended by […]

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