A morning at La Place des Vosges In the garden of the great Squarethe sun has been called to duty,and the lime trees dressto their cool attention,their shade in meticulous ranks;a fuss of pigeons in the leaveswhinges a gallic monotony.Hushed joggers puff their discretionin obedient lines,and the German ladiesimpose their Kaiser bulkonto the graceful belligerencethat is Tai Chi.A Vespa, with its coarse brass voice,falters for an instant,a dying momentin the breath of its gear change,a petit mort.In an early promenadeGrandmere pouches songs and astonishmentsfor a sleepy pram;Granpere trails behindas silent as the Somme.Some of the mansions squintin the morning sun.If they were not castin meticulous brickthey might be tempted tonod a small acknowledgementacross the wayto the mirror of themselves. - Grant Fraser Horizons There is no horizonfor the high-rise city;nothing out there even to imagine.5000 people per square kilometresee the sun at midday,watch it soak the city salmon pink at sundown.After four days as guests in a father’s house,four days straining into accents,four days positioning our wordsin the right place; our feet in footprintslike training wheels on the escalatorsof a foreign culture,we packed our bags, carried themand baggage to the airport.The taxi-driver smiled You’ve seenthe greenest country in the world.His world. We are wonderingwhere in our world it fits;Where the light is in the shadows. – Marlene Marburg
Snow in Kaunas At first I thought you were callingfrom the town square, softlylike the warbling of a magpie,or reciting one of the poet’s lyricsas students are wont in Spring:but this was an October nightand my room was colder than icea thousand fingers tappedand you breathed so many kisseson the trembling windowpanes.– Edward Reilly
Grant Fraser is a lawyer, poet and filmmaker. His collection of poetry Some Conclusion in the Heart was published by Black Willow Press. His film Syllable to Sound was screened on ABC1.
Marlene Marburg is a spiritual director and PhD research student with the Melbourne College of Divinity. Her area of interest is the relationship between poetry and spiritual direction.
Geelong-based Edward Reilly is a sessional lecturer in literary and educational studies at Victoria University, and a cultural activist. He is a former secondary school teacher in South Australia and Victoria. His poetry has been published in Australia, the USA and Lithuania.