The beautiful and the heroic

Here's a poem from Peter Reading, taken from his pictured 1997 collection:


Tristia

Three times the river has frozen over.
Three times the black sea has frozen over.
Three years I have been here (it seems like ten)
where the solstices seem not to matter,
nights and days being the same to me (long);
where hostile people constantly threaten
rapine and summary execution;
where to venture out is to take great risk;
where living is flimsily established
and atrocities perpetuated;
where the smallholders are afraid to scrape
the stony dirt to achieve their pittance
(one hand ploughing, one clutching a weapon)
or tend their scruffy sheep while they listen
for the approach of hoofbeats and marching,
with nervous glances over their shoulders.

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Peter Reading (1946 – 2011)

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