Eurydice

Yesterday's poem by Margaret Atwood and today's poem by Sue Hubbard are both based on the Greek myth of Orpheus, a distraught wandering minstrel, who entered the underworld to search for his dead nymph wife, Eurydice.

EURYDICE is a public work and can be seen among the bums and buskers on the IMAX underpass at Waterloo Station in London. Before I left London, I took photos of it to remind me. The words are sublime and the amazing thing is Sue Hubbard wrote it for Waterloo Station on demand, no inspiration necessary. That's scary talent.

Favourite poem #2

EURYDICE

I am not afraid as I descend,
step by step, leaving behind the salt wind
blowing up the corrugated river,

the damp city streets, their sodium glare
of rush-hour headlights pitted with pearls of rain;
for my eyes still reflect the half remembered moon.

Already your face recedes beneath the station clock,
a damp smudge among the shadows
mirrored in the train’s wet glass,

will you forget me? Steel tracks lead you out
past cranes and crematoria,
boat yards and bike sheds, ruby shards

of roman glass and wolf-bone mummified in mud,
the rows of curtained windows like eyelids
heavy with sleep, to the city’s green edge.

Now I stop my ears with wax, hold fast
the memory of the song you once whispered in my ear.
Its echoes tangle like briars in my thick hair.

You turned to look.
Second fly past like birds.
My hands grow cold. I am ice and cloud.

This path unravels.
Deep in hidden rooms filled with dust
and sour night-breath the lost city is sleeping.

Above the hurt sky is weeping,
soaked nightingales have ceased to sing.
Dusk has come early. I am drowning in blue.

I dream of a green garden
where the sun feathers my face
like your once eager kiss.

Soon, soon I will climb
from this blackened earth
into the diffident light.

by Sue Hubbard