Sven Kretzschmar’s poetry has been shortlisted for various awards and competitions in recent years and has appeared in numerous magazines, journals, and anthologies in Europe and overseas, among them Writing Home. The ‘New Irish’ Poets (Dedalus Press, 2019) and Turangalîla-Palestine (Dairbhre, 2019). New work is forthcoming in 100 Words of Solitude (Rare Swan Press).
See more at: https://trackking.wordpress.com/ // Instagram: @sven_saar_poetry
(for Bridget Borg and Luz Mar González-Arias)
It is said the Maltese consider the sea
their homeland horizon. Standing high
up on gold-blonde cliffs we see
vegetation pushing up, finding its way
between coarse slabs of rock. Come afternoon
backlight, it’s almost as if the ocean
itself would blossom in spring,
a palette of blue against stone,
gold and white and brown.
By the water’s edge cut-smooth pebbles
glimmer in the clean, flat tide of the bay,
so clear you can count their manifold shades
of grey. Come sundown, the water is silvering
out into rosé reflections of cloudscapes
moving not quite with the stolidity
of mountains. Up the bold cliffs, polished
for millennia by gales and saltwater,
the vague shape of a cave’s entrance.
Washed-out rock arcs
gripped by rippling azure
are breakwater for the Mediterranean.
Tonight, we’ll bed down in Victoria
and dream in colours
borrowed from the sea.
(first published in Poetry NI’s FourXFour issue 29)
Poetry in this post: © Sven Kretzschmar
Published with the permission of Sven Kretzschmar