Two Poems by Irene Philologos

When all that dreadful predictability
comes trudging up from the depths of the universe,
pleading “Say me. . . give voice to my long life”,

how beautiful to hear the waterdrop
and its great tumble
from the broken gutter to the wooden floor.

What lies below us, what lies above us, suddenly the one sky.

 
                                    ~o~


There are words –
we don’t know what they are –
and summers –
we don’t know if we’ll get there –
and doorways left open
into bright courtyards
and an arrangement that looks like life
though the water is rising past our ankles.
Through all the thirteen tiers of the serried hillside,
sleep, we can’t find you.

The distances are what they are:
magical.