Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Five November-December 2024
In minor key, poems by Sven Kretzschmar.
In a minor key
(for Helen Fares and Josi Miller)
Their time seems almost up
when they are singing lullabies in hiding
beneath the rubble on the side of the road
where tomorrow tanks will roll.
Shrapnels break families
into splinters under the ink dark moon –
ghosts that cry in the silence of air alerts
and the wails of a hundred thousand
screams. They would rather
not have their hearts torn but wild
with forest glades or streams –
and against leaf-veins would measure
their lives. Meanwhile
missiles in the night sky displace constellations.
Still, the music continues. In a minor key.
Foldline
Mist held in soft curves of dirt tracks hedged
with the almost-nakedness of wintering bushes. Frugal
sun waits to be claimed by the morning. A quiet day,
a good day, maybe, in the countryside. A rare one.
Dreich temperatures have unpacked sky and acres –
I revisit their furrows at every foldline of years.
Someone has carried quarrystones to the edge
of Rosselwood, heaped them on top of a building-
sand mound: An easy way to discard them.
Through their cracks wail the East wind and voices
choking under bombardment rubble of otherwhere.
Ghosts of winter
Crow dusk shadowed against a January sky –
transmission lines and nascent driving snow
turn them into ghosts of winter. Monday markets
are crammed with tractors and pickets. At night,
a solemn vigil mourning bomb fog and shattered
body parts around the debris of Gaza.
© Sven Kretzschmar
Sven Kretzschmar hails from Germany. His poetry has been published widely in Europe and overseas, among other outlets in Writing Home. The ‘New Irish’ Poets (Dedalus Press, 2019), Hold Open the Door (UCD Press, 2020), Voices 2021 (Cold River Press, 2021) The Irish Times, and Das Gedicht. He was awarded 2nd place at the Francis Ledwidge International Poetry Award 2022.