Flame of Liberty
To America Paris is freedom still,
you can buy a house a studio or a flat, (ai, near Disneyland)
you can live a la bohemian on champagne and oysters.
On the cobbled streets of Mounte Martre
Sacre Coeur is a steep hike
- a crazy, Arabian palace for dear Christ.
Sing to God in choirs
enjoy communal breathing,
drink the absinth of civilized trance and watch
ghostly, flickering pompadours on their way
to balls as if it was still their business
to entertain society, to provide food for gossip;
in the ambience of art and artists:
Berlioz, Paganini, Hahnemann,
Stravinsky, Hemingway, Elvis, Popeye.
Healing
The summer gone,
September rain pelts the glass.
The darkness of this place encroaches
suggesting “this place”, as if
there was another or another time
not now, not here.
Now the felt mat blackens.
Someone will soon release
cotton wool puffins to mop up
the tears, puffins to drain the rain.
The drugs, nearly forgotten,
smoothen the breath,
the breath, shrouded in fear.
Muffling the dread of choking
whisky mixed in the pit of the neck -
peat commixed with sister chamomile.
Orphic cure behind a waterfall:
cherubic smiles, promised heaven.
Csilla Toldy is a writer and translator from Hungary. Her writing appeared in literary magazines and anthologies and in book form in three poetry pamphlets: Red Roots - Orange Sky (2013), The Emigrant Woman’s Tale (2015) and Vertical Montage (2013, 2015, 2018 Lapwing Belfast), in Angel Fur and other stories (2019 Stupor Mundi) and as a novel Bed Table Door (2023, Wrecking Ball). She is the recipient of the Desmond Elliot Residency awarded by the National Centre for Writing.
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