Two Poems, Image & Voice – Marian Christie

After the early rains

A hybrid poem: "After the early rains" text & image. The image on the right a slender long photo shows a savannah landscape, dry yellow/brown earth in front, a circle of grass, beyond a stand of trees bushes and grass, beyond that dry hills and a pale blue sky with white/yellow cloud cover. Poem text: Lift these bones tenderly from the dried-blood soil. They do not belong here. Let them speak. Let them admonish the stones for their silence. Let them whisper to the ants, to the spears of grass. Let them cry to the vultures heavy-winged overhead. Let them shout to the thorn-trees, fill the sky with their rage. Lift her bones tenderly. Carry her home.

A room with open doors

We do not have to stay
here, in the trapped air
and unwavering light,
the unobtrusive hum
of all our thoughts.

Give me a room with open doors.
Let me taste
wave-cooled wind, salt-dust heat.
Let the scent of frangipani
mingle with the midden.

Give me a room that holds no echo.
Let me listen
to the song thrush and the chainsaw,
to the whispers of dusk
and the shouting streets.

Give me a room that welcomes the sky.
Let me ride Apollo’s chariot,
dance the light-beams of Selene.
Let me shiver to the pulse
of colliding neutron stars.

Give me a room that has no threshold,
that greets
purple tears of jacaranda,
the skeleton rattle
of frost-rimed leaves.

Give me a room without any chairs.
When the tide rises, we will splash
in the dip and swell of foam,
rippled sand
between our toes –

for the doors are open
there will be a way.

Marian Christie reads, ‘A room with open doors’:

A Note from the Author:

Cassandra was granted the gift of prophecy by Apollo; but she betrayed her promise to him and so he imposed a curse, that no one would believe her prophecies to be true. 
Who are the prophets of our time? How can we determine where to place our trust? Truth, in all its forms, does not articulate to our choosing. We need to listen – not only to the stories we want to believe, the voices with which we agree, but also to dissonance. We need to listen to silence, and to those who have been silenced. 

Marian Christie is from Harare, Zimbabwe. She lived in various countries in Africa, Europe and the Middle East before moving to her present home in southeast England. Her work has been widely anthologized. She has published two books of poetry, Fractal Poems and Triangles, with Penteract Press and is co-editor of an anthology of poetry by Zimbabwean women, now available from Carnelian Heart Press, U.K.. Her collection of essays, From Fibs to Fractals: exploring mathematical forms in poetry, arose out of her long-standing interest and research into the connections between mathematics and poetry. It shall be reprinted in a new edition by Ice Floe Press (2023). Marian blogs at www.marianchristiepoetry.net and is on Twitter @marian_v_o.

Banner Art: “Juxtaposed, an altered excerpt from a photo by Marian Christie“, Robert Frede Kenter (c) 2023.

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