Saturday, 25 May 2019

The Solitary by Vuyelwa Carlin



One of the poems…

Guy Fawkes and the Torturers

A cobweb-scrawl – he could bearly hold the pen
he signed – just – a bag of loose joints for the flames.
He was racked for days, in the forbidden rooms,
the cellars of the dark soul, fallen.

One day, hour, minute more – to the God of pain
he clings; wrenches to mind the vales and loams,
beloved, where they crouch, the lodged names
- gouged at last from the deep bed, scraped from the bone.

The fracturing sticks of this incarnation,
its twisting strings: the torture-scholars grind
the rope and tackle: crush the shadow, blind

and dumb; they’d pincer out the nerves of God
if they only could – pay back the terrible Word,
the act, intolerable, of creation.

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