Poetic Movements

  The city swirls and swirls undoing itself, in all the ways possible. From this side, the sun warms the skin differently and as I walk deeper in the gardens I am not sure what year I find myself in, or if it matters. I borrow someone else's face as I am allowed and I am confidently another, or maybe many at once, while the square circles me and around me; the only thing that makes sense in the moment. The trees have stored the memory of you, their roots absorbing the pace of your walk, their leaves reflecting your, likewise, many faces. A woman who resembles me stares from the surface of a pond sprouting next to my feet; and she also looks like you, the many versions of you that are all me now. Tavistock square, London, 25 April 2025.

  I Irregular images go by quite naturally. II A pull deep inside the wave plunges before the shore. III A procession of doors shutting firmly behind me. IV A further pull the water mumbles far from the shore. V Gardens how in their beauty spread in front of me. VI Hooded crows paired in the skies time-travellers alike. VII Stairs beneath my feet rise in rambling buildings. VIII A single white feather by the wind carried across horizon deep. IX The train with all its nine coaches drags in tunnels stoically. X Sky creatures bizarrely by me undisturbed in the same sea. XI Words of use written or spoken lavishly, kindly. XII Thick shadows of the olive trees for a moment still unnaturally. XIII In a bookstore’s poetry section we speak for ten minutes then never again. XIV All the sounds finally surrender to the eyes’ silence. Summer 2024, London – Samothraki. Picture: Tavist...

  We are still driving in the car along this thin line telling day from night apart. You lean and kiss me, and it’s the first time and the hundredth time, and this moment perfectly balancing light with dark hovers on the edges of eternity. It’s the first time and I’m taking you by the hand to walk through Tavistock then Russell then Bloomsbury square minutes before their gates close seconds until I finish these lines. It’s the hundredth time, the hundredth line, the hundredth fragment of a story to be told; and yet words sound like the only (time) at all. Spring Equinox & World Poetry Day 2023. Photograph: Detail from Russell Square, London; 22 Oct. 2022.

That night it rained but the rain made no sound it swayed from sky to earth effortlessly lighter than a breeze. The whisper in the atmosphere ceased as if taught by the rain's doings; You were still holding your breath holding your feelings when the rain stopped and we paused observing the quietness. Nov. 2022, Athens Photograph: rain on Chelsea Bridge, London; 23 Oct. 2022

Home was far it was with the earlier memories and moments long gone; home was the scents and smells now vaguely traced in the atmosphere it was the tastes and touches of the skin survived by the flesh underneath; home was to be basking in the sun with eyes casually closed it was the trust of letting go and letting fall; home was the empty bars post-midnight populated by the smoke of cheap cigars talks and words momentarily tangible, then immaterial; home became a place in-between space just enough and no more. 4 Nov. 2022, Athens Photograph: Kyoto Garden, London; 23 October 2022.

  If you closed your eyes for a second maybe you would see a house as it was over a hundred years ago would feel the street uncomfortably cobbled under your feet sense the sun resting wider on surfaces, including your skin hear children's voices through the top window, but not necessarily happy ones. If you closed your eyes and attempted to conceive the very same place decades and centuries ago; would you feel the same? Would you be the same? Imagining Hyde Park Gate in Virginia Woolf’s childhood time; London, 23 Oct. 2022. Picture: 22 Hyde Park Gate, where Virginia Woolf was born & lived until 1904; photo taken on 23 Oct. 2022.