BIRKENAU | Colin Honnor

…. the pine forests by Mainz

lit parabolas glare in the Kinema

the touch of lips on house wall screen

faces between hands become flowers, fossils

the falling clouds perimiter, black cherm, under

cones and needles

Look, at the bones that mock you

polyhedral, whitening

Each seed burns in its sprouting

From the black soil become its own inanition

And cultivates itself the twilight

pine twigs, scented pines, hot pine needles breath,

resinous pine cones gathered

taken home to burn or gild,

(the old dispensation in the new world)

who saw the sickle flames through tree trunks

and roe deer dart between their frozen hands

who wandered there in nightshirts, freed

from the human experiment.

Colin Honnor is widely published in magazines in print and online, including: Bitterzoet, The Screech Owl, Eunoia Review, Crack the Spine, Poetry Bay, The Missing Slate, The Hour of Lead, Sentinel Journal, MessageinaBottle, Ataraxia, Miracle, InkSweatandTears, A New Ulster, The New Shetlander, Hark, Angle, Awen, Allegro and Inclement. He formerly edited Poetry and Audience, is a literary scholar, translator of modern European poetry and runs a fine arts press in the Cotswolds.