Title: Sport 41: 2013

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2014, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 41: 2013

Aleksandra Lane

page 180

Aleksandra Lane

1941

Lindens outside my childhood
home are now much taller, hiding
the view of the barren valley below.
Barbed wire surrounds the section
where we played hide and seek, innocence
drained months ago
from the soil under the prisoners’ feet, cursing
under their soles. At night
I hear lindens crying for luna, for the summer
just gone, summer of omens,
while the thin twigs of arms and legs keep
breaking off
and landing in heaps, becoming compost
for the only thing that will ever
grow there—acres of loss.

Women are embracing killers, embracing
the dead. Women
are giving birth to cold blooded
murders, raising the offspring
on little more than a handful of bitter
forest berries and cornflour
wrapped in headscarves, smuggled past
the hungry guards
under the coat, under the blouse.
Food is kept close to the heart, like love
or a newborn, or words
which can no longer express, just ache,
night after night, like lindens crying for luna,
invisible
behind the autumn cloud.

page 181

Summer of omens

Europe is nibbling on its limbs, while Germany presents
the largest speed dating book fair for writers
and publishers, and every small town west of Danube
is hosting its own carnival, internationally acclaimed.
Money keeps moving, circling around the globe, unlike most of us
who have nowhere left to go. The moon, some say,
is just a lightbulb, turned on and off, spotlight
on our stellar democracy.

Europe is getting colder and hungrier and increasingly irate,
while Russia keeps arresting, holding its cards drunkenly
over the green casino table top. China and Japan, being older
than most at playing empires, are willing to call each other’s
bluffs. Iran and Syria have become figures of speech, yet they
are spilling real blood. Jerusalem anxiously pours
petrol in their cocktails, and the US
re-elects.

Food is amazingly abundant, considering all the local
disasters, droughts, fires and floods. Weapons are manufactured
but no one mentions that and technology haunts us, undead.
Europe is younger than ever, and thinner than it’s ever been,
silicone bursting through its seams while the moon awaits
the richest of the rich. The US
re-elects itself.