‘I always remember the streets, the stone’: Two poets write about cities around the world

One for Eunice

As are we, ready to grow in lieu,
wherever the grafts we brew.
I remember the transplants I knew,
the rooted uprooted, the damned-if-we-do,
the sailor exiled to shore.

I return the name of the storm
to the Eunice remembered in this song:
Eunice de Souza, poet, lover, curmudgeon,
who rendered history to snapshot, theology to form,
in one or two stanzas, a dozen lines, no more,

and invented a voice so sharp, sardonic and wry
three generations of poets took up her cry.
But it was love she extracted from fury.
Bombay’s almond leaf, impossible to bury,
listing, landlocked, sailor.

— JT.

Ephesus

Heraclitus, who derided Pythagoras,
was born and reared in Ephesus –
a colonial epicentre
within the Ionian League.

I went looking for Pythagoras
on Samos forty years ago,
but though I sailed to Kusadasi
and bused to Ephesus,

I didn’t think of Heraclitus.
Almost alone in the ruins,
I filled the theatre with my carry-on.
I didn’t make resolutions, or grow wings.

Different phases, different eras.
I never think of libraries in terms
of conquest. The sea further from the harbour,
and the sun, like the fire it was, overhead

but in reach. Attracting ancient fears,
I didn’t hear the sleep of the seven sleepers.
I hope it’s not selfish if I keep
my revelations to myself.

I sometimes rewrite the occasion.
I always remember the streets, the stone.

— JK.

Tiresias and me

It wasn’t that he could not...

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