From HELLENIC POST
The drilling would start at all hours
from 1500 BC
to the present day.
It just ruined our stay.
We tracked down the Gods
to their offices by the sea,
behind their unclimbable walls.
So far they’ve refused all our calls.
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As the thin
pale
pigeon
waddled
onto the yellow
table
in front
of the hot
bus station
it placed
its left
claw down
into the damp
and gunk
of the black ashtray.
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The myths don’t have it quite right.
Ares never got out of war
when on went his internet café lights
one evening on the Aegean shore,
losing the R in Greek.
His was that network of islands
across the signalling spray,
and him they’ve called in to design
the sharp-eyed birds of prey,
their falconers at screens on remote peaks.
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ALISTAIR NOON‘s first full-length collection Earth Records is available from Nine Arches Press. He lives in Berlin.
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Read more work by Alistair Noon:
Translation of Osip Mandelstam in B O D Y
Earth Records
Reviewed by Peter Riley
Archive of the Now