This piece is part of our ongoing series ‘Poem of the Month’. Every month, the Writer’s Edit team selects their favourite submission and provides detailed feedback to the author.
Stay tuned for an interview with Claire Wong, discussing her inspirations and literary influences.
Etymology in the Buffer Zone by Claire Wong
the windows are still wide open
in an empty quarter
where the creak-clack of shutters
wards off the stillness of dust settled on streets
now reporters press their noses to the fence
look for trite echoes of Olympus in the barbed wire
then take coffee and baklava at a table
where their notebooks sit, waiting and blank
and the sea expands too dark, too deep
in a colour whose name must lie
up to the skyline – ultramarine
‘Beyond the sea’
ultra, ulterior, ultimate
the bluest harbourer of submerged secrets
marine, marina, mariner
vast and alone
the windows are still wide open
in fixed tribute to a seventies summer day
a rumble, a rumour over breakfast
but Eleni lays out the plates for her mother
watched from the wall by the twin frames of a shining haloed Mary
and Eris with her golden apple
surveying the towers of Troy
the returning tourist’s head is more full of the orange trees
than talk of the crisis
‘the turning point in a disease’
krisis, chrysalis
whatever emerges from the trouble
krino, krinein, crinkle in the crinoline
she knocked a bowl on the way out to the car
the sound of its shattering
jolted her, as if something more violent
and the hasty promise to her mother
she would pick up the crockery shards herself
as soon as they came back
but that was forty years ago
now, on shorelines rust red or in glimmering mists
a tourist with footprints like Teucer’s
the wandering son
far from his homeland
who seeks a new place to dig furrows for foundations
o my child, my child, where are you now?
perhaps all these cities are only for a time
and we are always rebuilding Salamis
nil desperandum, now set the sails
despero, de-spero, de-sperate, disperse
remember Odysseus, her brother would say
when he found her, nose against the nearest pane
just for the sake of looking outward
beyond the sea – ultramarine
he made it home to wide-open windows
but the storms, the magic, the adventure
the Phaeacian treasures and enchanted feasts
were all in his journey
remember that, he would say
and don’t think of the windows
on a remote rocky clifftop
Teucer and Odysseus sit with their faces to the wine-dark sea
singing the old songs
and telling the eager writers
who make the trek up the coast path to their haunt
looking for some clever new vantage-point
‘no comment’
‘we were only heroes, we didn’t have the answers.’
and they clunk together their tankards
watching travellers unpack their tales on the sands