In Retrospect
A man with no past is a tottering tower with no foundation.

I constantly revisit my past,
whose resurrected associations
are at times excruciating,
but at others quite exhilarating.

I dwell in the past
in an array of haunting songs,
of unfulfilled dreams
and ever-delayed gratification.

I dwell in the past
in the day before you came,
when my temple was un-trampled upon
by your dissonant feet,
and every consecrated altar
was beyond your reach.

In my childhood

In my childhood
I had witnessed the witch hunt for butterflies,
though not convicted of witchcraft,
but for preservation,
which happens to be an art,
the crucifixion type.

I had seen troops of ants
crushed by people’s feet
with glee,
and the bagworm that glued itself to our garden wall
to shelter its soul
have its bag ripped to pieces.

They’ve all become intricately interwoven
with all that is obscene
in this digital age that has bred Epsteins.

Thomas Hardy

In Westminster Abbey he was laid to rest,
but his cut-out heart had chosen Dorset,
where Bathsheba rode her horse astride
and Tess of the D’Urbervilles had fought with strife.

He tirelessly roamed the streets of London,
the ‘monster with four million heads
and eight million eyes’,
shunning its much-hated crowds.

Reckoning

I hold you accountable
for every frozen deer and duck,
for erupting waters that instantly gulp
cities and hamlets with suffocating mud.

I hold you responsible
for turning a blind eye
to the laceration of every sky,
to the white deaths of adult and child.

Dr Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a PhD on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, A New Ulster, Crossways, The Curlew, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ink Pantry, Mad Swirl, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, and Down in the Dirt.

Susie’s first book (adapted for film), Classic Adaptations, includes Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

You can find more of Susie’s work here on Ink Pantry.