Testaments Apart Poem by Richard George

1

Pudsey, cleared for suicide cummerbunds,
works a Purim miracle.
Three fortysomething schoolgirls
paw me towards a beehive:
cookies from Elsa's Kitchen.

Apple, raisin, cinnamon,
an alchemy-amalgam of spice and sweetness.
An ink-lash snags in my eye:
'Pastry bites'. A scrumper in a kibbutz,
I swallow the evidence.

On the carton, hooped bathers from 'Death In Venice'
stand guard over Elsa.


2

Once children waved
and mothers, fathers alighted
at that Roman fort where no lines led back.
Now Bible faces hurtle in glass
through the constellations of night, Hendon and Cricklewood.

Across the aisle from me is a young executive.
I don't know her from Eve, or Lilith
but respond to a nuance
in her cheek and quiet calibre
I recognise from the picture.

She grimaces. My kind glance is a search warrant.

'Come on, the water's fine! ' 'Schnell!
the shower is getting cold'.
In her white void of Jacuzzi, which will she hear?