Poem

Mario Petrucci

Side by side

21ST AUGUST, 1991

I mush together the garlic and the butter
for Kiev
for Kostroma too, and Novgorod;
slip wafers
of potato onto the rough tongue
of my grill. An onion
brings tears. Its layered histories
come clean: Russian-doll rings
that quoit and bangle over reels of drumsticks.

I call you at work. Mothers
are telegramming sons not to shoot, women
encircle the cold, grey bulk
of tanks, while the junta plays
Chinese whispers.

Tonight, then, we’ll eat well –
sip that jerepigo wine
till dusk. For now, I prepare what I can;
I watch, and listen,
through the frame of my window –
a radio mutters and school-children
are a chaff of colour blown about the distant yard
where in one corner settles
a tiny mandala of linked hands.

Dedicated to the Russian women who took to the streets to resist the attempted coup by Kremlin hardliners during August 1991.

Mario Petrucci

(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1958)

Mario Petrucci is a prolific and powerful poet, known for his themed collections that explore love and loss, scientific consciousness, the natural world and the complexities of warfare.

His poetry is often situational, taking inspiration directly from a key historical site, such as Southwell Workhouse in the volume Fearnought, or the region around Chernobyl in Heavy Water and Half Life. Ecology...