Margery Rehman

After you died I couldn't piece you together.
It frightened me a bit.
The more I longed for you
The more fragmented you became.
...

Restless, pacing panther-like,
I prowl the palace
Preparing for the gods to punish me,
As is my fate.
...

(The real nursery rhyme goes;
How many miles to Babylon?
Three score and ten.
Can I get there by candlelight?
...

Hot, long lazy days
Sun dazed dragonflies skimming
Light filters through leaves
We swim among the lilies
...

The sun begins to set behind
Burnt umber hills,
Singeing them with fiery red,
And spreads its light
...

How we loved them.
In an otherwise grey world
These blinkered, patient creatures
Gave us such delight as
...

Stuttering gunfire
Bodies like rags lie in heaps
On the burning road
Blood dries out fast in the heat
...

In this lonely brooding place
The old gods still have power, still reign.
Here the rough-hewn hills around the lake
Stand out like ramparts, built by them,
...

Up on the hill
In the posh areas
Where the Victorian villas
Were set back from tree lined roads,
...

My thanks for being critical
To pointing out how factual
Too biographically actual
Too formal, too literal
...

Like brilliant diamonds in the skies
Is the sparkle in Naomi's eyes
Gleaming from beneath straight brows
In a sculptured classic face that tries
...

Chiara Sophia comes through the door
Does a cartwheel on the floor
Over and over, upside down
And downside up she turns around,
...

A sense of peace and balance.
A pattern with a darkening sky.
Three disconnected clouds fly by
As if forgotten
...

Far away and elsewhere
Is a place we do not dare
To go alone
For there the leopard and the tiger
...

Life hangs in a vacuum.
Hesitant to plan anything
Go to town, invite friends to dropp in,
We get on with our tedious routine
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An open space, pitted with ditches,
Jagged places, filled with debris.
We were warned not to play there
But what child could resist it?
...

I'm trying
I'm really trying
But all my thoughts
In words go flying.
...

When the world was new,
Or so it seemed to us
When we were very young,
We met and loved.
...

No one could fathom the reason
My grandmother's cat was called Fluff
For this was a short haired moggy,
A close-cropped, crew-cut scruff.
...

Pretty demoiselles
In flowered summer dress
Adventurous young men
Shyly forward press
...