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Louise's Poetry
At high tide, the sea sweeps clean across the bay,
licks into each crevice in the cliffs with a smooth grey tongue.

From way up here, we see its smooth surface stretching
to the long arc of the skyline.

Reflecting the soft light,
its skin gives no hint
of shifting fronds or gliding life below.

Only, some distance out,
a darkened eddy
betrays something beneath:
a great rock, crouching underwater,
a seriousness unseen.

As the moon sucks back the waters,
it elbows out of the receding waves
until it is alone:
a hunched neanderthal,
naked in terror on the sands.

Every lit edge gleams against a shade,
but I cannot make out the whole.

The moon shines in my eyes.

My footprints fill with water.
when I look back, they are gone.

How did I come to be here?
On an empty beach, under the moon?
Drawn to this great black stone?

©1996 Louise Hashemi

No, no,
no call can bring me –

But speak softly
and I will share your sadness.

© Louise Hashemi

I am the archway. Once might worlds pass here,
But now I rise up gaunt against the dawn,
A place to pass from now to long ago.
The early morning air is full of ghosts:
The dead and those unsought and unconceived
Still call as soft as doves along the walls.
By day the tourists dawdle round the court,
Look down where ramparts fall in grassy folds
Towards the gleaming summer road below.
A child’s hand traces edges of warm stone.
I watch him go. And the night wind rises,
and the dark sky is pressed against the earth.
I crouch below the stars. At length I see
The moon inscribe the archway of the world.

©2008 Louise Hashemi