La Cimetière, St Paul de Vence

for Marc Chagall

 

 Belarusian but later known as French

you chose this quiet churchyard,

a Jewish son in a hilltop village;

the sky, the Mediterranean, the blue.

 

Your tombstone gleams in the Provence sun

flat and white under a cypress tree,

sentinel to the God of Vitebsk;

the goat, the bride, the narrow muddy lane.

 

Each morning your father read the Bible

stories flowed like angels on Jacob’s ladder

until you spun the words in colour;

wedding white, cool moss green, the serpent’s cunning skin.

 

On the tomb we leave a stone for tradition

mark that we have been here.

Then we walk back down the steep lane

and wait for the evening bus.

 

 

© Miriam Halahmy

 

 

‘Foulest and most cruel’

The killing of Nancy : ‘ Oliver Twist’  Dickens

 

 

 Unspeakable, oh shut the dog!

 

Take the sun and block it out

But not the gun, a blasted sound

 

If she cries out, if they hear,

So beat down hard and hide your eyes

 

Beat down hard, club the head

Smash and grab and hide your face

 

Too dreadful, God, to look upon

The coward way, the bloodied bone

 

The pitted skull, the crumpled eye

Oh shut the dog, its scrabbled paws

 

This not her face beneath the rug.

 

 

© Miriam Halahmy