P.Viktor

The Furies

These are the guardians of the new order –
the Furies, a panel of po-faced bureaucrats,
a jury waiting to hang an innocent man.

There are three of them – one is a woman,
two others men. She appears to be queen,
her wings great swathes of cherry blossom.

This is an illusion – this is to blind a person.
Her petals are really scales, her emaciated
arms are hairy branches, ending in talons.

The old, vinegary bitch, a mouth wrinkled
to a prune, a smile a mushroom of cloud –
all nuclear radiance devoid of kindness.

She is flanked on either side by two men
who are not men. The first has red-burnt
skin on his face, he appears to be shedding.

How sore it looks, dusted in white dead cells.
He is thin as a spindle, as under-developed
as an amphibian, his body a single hunch,

Unable to mutter more than a few words.
His companion is all but a child, schoolboy
cowlick, cartoon tie, big comical spectacles.

He is an eight-year-old statistician genius
now allowed to play with the adults. They sit
in a row behind the clean hospital tables.

He is brought before these strange creatures,
a quivering wreck, a queer thing decked out
in a narrow black suit, a shirt starched white,

An ashen striped tie, his hair well groomed.
He is a cut-out from a men’s magazine, a lean,
glamorous mannequin, blank as an applicant.

Such odd implements used to assess him –
a tape-measure for intellect, a calliper for
past experience, a yardstick for aptitude.

There are no fair chances here, only unseen
criterion, a specification of no real person.
Quite soon they run out of questions –

They astound themselves with silences.
There is no other recourse than to extinguish
the far-off self which lies far beyond them.

Scarf

Trepidation was felt on a bed-edge,
our feet dangled as though to the sea –
but only the dull brown carpet beneath,
despite the rush of vertigo, the presage
of a love somehow meant to be.

This was my first good look at him,
a boy I had once too easily dismissed.
The sudden lonely impulse to be kissed –
the fear of it being unreciprocated,
lips empty of such unholy union. 

Ours was a day of viewing chapels
and old churches, as though a couple
trying to find a place for their nuptials,
but we were still strangers, our fates
had not caught up with us yet.

He asked if he could borrow a scarf,
the March day having grown quite cold,
though I knew I might not see him again,
that a scarf given would be a memento,
a piece of a wardrobe lost to the tide.

I cannot remember if he meant to
return it, he found some other way in
to a life grown accustom to absences.
All I recall is two people plunging into
the wide open sea, five years ago.