Pieria View

Do you remember his name? Time on time he’d drop it Over the years and yet No-one bent to pick it up  Funny that. Used to joke he had A better head for names than Faces, but guess they both fit Through the neck of a bottle Can somebody not leave a mark? There are scratches under the seat Where he’d pick anxiously waiting On the bell to ring last rites And the memory of a seat that’s Always taken so you don’t even Look to see if it’s empty though The room’s buzzing with thirst Not much to show for a life Even one travelled so lightly  Still you might imagine a footprint Somewhere behind in the dirt

It was as if leaves suddenly started to turn  The singing broke a morning’s stillness Green faded into yellow; yellow to red Sound cascading down the walls The heat pressing through the clouds Not much of note to mark the moment We didn’t recognise the tune itself   Jasmine climbed away from its frame But the key changes resonated The flowers having fallen weeks back Time, then, is counted in shortening hours Notes dropping above and below Between what was and what’s to come A bit flat, now a little sharp, always earnest Taking pleasure in the not knowing You never notice till the season’s past A last chorus drifted through glass How that smell of blooms covers all sins Was it a hallelujah or just the mind’s echo? Its absence returns sticky-sweet rot Better to have spent the time distracted Silence carries a new weight now Than fall from vines in trying to capture Ears peeled as if expecting the encore Another autumn

Below is a draft of a play I wrote back in 2012, but never finished. I have finally got round to finishing it and thought I might share given its theme is the rise of nationalism amid the collapse of the Russian hyper-capitalist experiment in the late 1990s. The 17 references the number of votes by which then Russian President Boris Yeltsin was spared impeachment, a moment at which the country could well have taken another course. The 17 - Final Draft

I came across the (mis-)quote above from the 19 th Century French orientalist Ernest Renan in the most recent Julian Barnes novel Elizabeth Finch. Barnes notes the import of “being” and not “becoming”. Getting history wrong is not just part of the foundation of a nation on these terms but an ongoing process that reinvigorates, replenishes and sustains the thread of nationhood and shared identity. The fact that the collective history is largely myth is not incidental, but part of the initiation into the community – getting history wrong is a condition of entry. In Renan’s essay, the actual quote centres not on the “historical error” though, which is an extension of the thought, but on the importance of forgetting. “It is good,” he goes on to say, “for everyone to know how to forget” such that we don’t fall into an endless spiral of chasing historical grievances that would tear at the delicate fabric of a nation. Yet the frame of forgetting is interesting in its distinctness from the

The quality of summer is its silence Humidity forcing the world to slow So even the flies seem lethargic In their bids to escape Hanging in the air with words, if spoken At all. The quality of summer is that Burnt salinity of an evening where The bricks hold their heat Hold us close till we don't want to Eat and can't face to ask if we've Played this all out before under the watch Of an unblinking sun. If spoken at all, I'd tell you it doesn't Matter that we know the form, as the Quality of summer is that it can't tell If all happiness is alike Your fingers pressed into my palms To draw out a shiver of recognition I would know you in the silence, In the heat, in the light.

Planting I planted the seeds Into the dirt around the tree stump Still sap-bleeding out its last   Where in a few hours Children will linger to play, as anxious parents Try in vain to hurry them past   Leaning heavy on the railings - Already exhausting the dry last dregs Of a morning’s first caffeine   As rows of parked cars Let the engines choke their low murmur Though it might wake you.   But I didn’t come in Past the gate hanging slightly away From its post, and swung open   In the crisp early wind That must have blown the leaves down Treading the season underfoot   I planted the seeds Beneath the moss and the pebbled soil Kicked up by foxes   Scratching for a meal In all that we leave behind, still Perhaps they’ll leave   These just where they are Since they’re no good for them really Or even for us, yet,   You not knowing And I not willing to tell what the earth Conceals in its silence.   If the frost