LEMONS FOR KLARA
by Leslie Philibert 

Lemons for Klara

for Klara Grünzweig 1957-2016

drops of river or ice patches;
all of this without your notice
but tough and half eternal

the lemon tree grows
cool and silent;
this makes you remain. 

Golem

unholy earth, dark with stein,
unformed loam at birth;
a worded child of mud,

fingernail skinned blacklack eyes,
peek out of a ball of wet slam;
a groundling that waves like a black branch

across the sleeping fields,
see a shadow under the cold grass,
near in sight under a crust of frost.

Tower of the Blue Horses

(after Franz Marc)

Four of stained glass and stars
all leftglance beyond ratio or air,
thin as tissue but strong

as a pastel visa; fated curves
guide your hand, voices drag you
into mud and steal the day.

After Reading The Bell Jar

curl up like black paper,
burning like a moth;
a glove turned inside out;

trapped too under a house,
a circle hidden and musty,
fragile under steps;

let us escape the carrying,
legions of white coats,
corridors as long as life.  

A Night in Tenerife

the sea the skin of a wet dog,
black the beach; a ruined church,
the coastal lights a string of lesser ways;
we are as empty as a dropped shell
pulled across the ebb, a ripple of salt:

and as the night gets deeper
a dragon breathes like the tide:
no mistake, the dark needs its hours.

About the Author:

Leslie Philibert is a London-born social worker and poet living in Germany. He has published work in a number of magazines in the UK and US and has done some translations for a South German theatre group. He is married with two children.