Adaptation by Fiona Lesley Bennett

Adaptation

​

Czechoslovakia 1976

 

A man is shuttered away in a laboratory

he stares down the lens of a microscope

into the peppercorn eyes of a moth.

At night words fall through him like particles

that cluster and mutate in spiralling patterns

Nemuze uverit, nemuze uverit, nemuze uverit .

 

Every twenty-two hours

the moth hangs in its pupa

waiting for the blood to fall

and for the wind and the currents.

 

Columbia 2011

 

A woman is kept in a jar, the jar

is kept in darkness, the darkness

is blacker than her eyes. Inside herself

she dreams she is a girl running barefoot

with a net in the garden.

creelo, creelo, creelo

 

    Somewhere

    between thought and dream, between

    decades and hemispheres and species

    the edge of belief begins

    like a wing that trembles   

    and then lifts.   

​

​

Fiona Lesley Bennett