Tony Kitt is a poet from Dublin, Ireland, also living in Calabria, Italy. He has been working as a creative writing tutor and a magazine editor. His poetry titles include Endurable Infinity (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022) and The Magic Phlute (SurVision Books, Dublin, Ireland, 2019). A new collection, Sky Sailing, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry, Ireland, in autumn 2025. His poems appear in multiple magazines and anthologies, including Oxford Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Daily, The North, Cyphers, The Café Review, Plume, Matter, The Fortnightly Review, The Honest Ulsterman, The New Ulster, etc. He edited the Contemporary Tangential Surrealist Poetry anthology (SurVision Books, 2023) and the anthology entitled Invasion: Ukrainian Poems about the War (SurVision Books, 2022).
The late light silicones its silly gold
all over the ribs of this evening, leaks
the loneliness of libraries.
From afar, a dialogue of obsessions;
the stance of the distance.
So many lessons to unlearn!
I try to reconnect. I swim
in the dreaming grass. Are we
on the same wingwave?
The future is the Church of Annuals;
the present, a dictatorship of weather.
I believe in the air that’s not on fire. I believe
in the soliloquy of borrowing.
I don’t know what to make of
what’s been made before.
The hills paint themselves
with sorrow. The cacti tap
into the secret paths of water.
Ithaca
Your lips read the dead days
of your life. This is how whisper was invented.
You saw trees lighted from within. You saw hope
painted on the reverse side of La page blanche.
All this until timetables turned.
Overtones tinge the postnatal haze.
You erased what had shaped you. Parents
hurrying through the night’s heart.
Bookshadows.
Snowbells.
Your journey sings a lullaby
to its beginning. Which of your selves
have you taken with you?
Are you bringing your life
where it doesn’t want to go?
You’re the beast of your skull cage;
your home is a thousand good-byes.
Breathe the ocean’s mind;
ask the mother of all fish
if you’ll ever land.
Memories, friendly as thunder…
Who has an “I”-shaped heart?
Silence is a longboat signal.
Each word is a seagull
that never comes back.
First published in Endurable Infinity by Tony Kitt; University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022.
Poetry in this post: © Tony Kitt
Published with the permission of Tony Kitt