Robert Hrdina- Three Poems

SOLAR ECLIPSE

… and then we see the hereafter …

No grass, no trees, no butterflies

No alley of light, no life at the speed of

Light reeling off like a fast-backward film

It’s like a pint of Guinness

Pitch-dark

Cold as ice

Without the creamy head

THE KISS OF ANNE MHURUCH

I thought your lips were cold

As fogged windscreens

Redolent of algae and salt

But they are warm, almost tender

Not putrid at all

Selkies choose their own company

Sometimes their own for company

You breathe and devour life

Like myself

A myth baptised in sepia ink

“Time is irrelevant to angels”

Random words from a hungry mouth

As I, numb and bewildered, leave

The dank quarters of a livid sea

Longing for the company of ghosts

THE SCHLIERSEE WITCH

That withered old woman is still there

Desperate for company, a soul to talk to

Her lips distorted by cream and sugar

Her dying face blurred by the evening sun

She mourns the non-existence of her offspring

Sadness has a name

With tears in weary eyes

All those wars

All those deaths

Only herself

Left

And the key to a locker

in Bergen-Belsen

ROBERT HRDINA, born 1967, studied at Regensburg and Trinity College, Dublin. A former infantry officer, barman and lecturer in Business English, he currently works as a university department secretary. Publications include (ÉIRE) Books Ireland, (UK) orbis, Poetry Manchester, Psychopoetica, Purple Patch, Retort, Roadworks, STAND, Unhinged, (USA) Aura, Luna Negra, Verse.