A quartet of poems
From poet and traveller David Adès.
Wanting
I have given up wanting for myself,
ah, but for my children
wanting is a hungry beast,
a tiger I am holding by the tail,
a half-empty glass
I pour and pour myself into.
I Lied
saying that I had given up
wanting for myself,
when in fact the wanting was
too big to contain, that dominion of love
in which there are no bombs,
no missiles, no bullets, no enemies,
no hatred, no prejudice,
no hubris-filled men on foolish
missions of conquest,
no more of all of that
which makes us wither inside.
The Moment, Taken
after Jennifer Compton
I stole a kiss
and kept it
and gave it back
and had it returned
with interest.
Candle
for Paul Askern
Another star has fallen from my sky,
extinguished by mortality’s relentless march ‒
so many pools of darkness spreading now
in the dimming light.
Adelaide-born poet and short story writer David Adès now lives in Sydney, where he convenes the WestWords Poets’ Corner monthly poetry podcast series. His own work has appeared in literary magazines in Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., Rumania and Israel, and his collections Mapping the World, 2008, Only the Questions Are Eternal, 2015 Afloat in Light, 2017, are to be followed by the forthcoming ‘The Heart’s Lush Gardens’ and ‘A Blink of Time’s Eye’. ‘Mapping the World’ was commended for the 2008 FAW Anne Elder Award, and he was the winner of the 2005 Wirra Wirra Vineyards Short Story Prize, and 2014 University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize. David is a Pushcart Prize double nominee, and he has been shortlisted for a number of other prizes in Australia, the U.S. and Israel.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.