Two Poems by Lisa Kelly

Roses for the Maginot Line, 1938

‘Fleurissez-les mon général, plantez des rosiers!’
— landowner, Jean Paquel, to Général Giraud

Imagine! Grey vertebrae, a spiny
800-miles-long from the blue of the Med
to the gunmetal of the North Sea.

Imagine a continuous front of ferro-concrete,
affronting your eyes in a bucolic limbo —
waiting for which side will blink first.

Imagine a rose. Its pale pink, pretty petals
with a discreet perfume. Imagine its beauty,
its thorns — picked for what it might symbolise.

Imagine strolling, smoking, surveying,
never far from your fortress, your pillbox
your bunker, your shelter, your prison wing.

Imagine one day it might be covered in moss
and lichen but now it is lifeless, not even
the ravens dare shit on its starkness.

Imagine the first tree planted by Madame Giraud,
wife of the Military Governor of Metz —
as you cheer at the Camp du Ban-Saint-Jean.

Imagine 10,000 rose trees blooming to resist
the outline of the concrete, how a national
petition raised funds intended to lift your spirits.

Imagine saying its name — the unflowery
Général de Vaulgrenant, and how a rose
might redefine your idea of terroir, or territory.

Psychopomp

Look up! Like eye floaters
turkey vultures fleck the sky —
a shade of blue akin to madness.

They are gregarious but restless,
mastering thermals, mesmerising 
your docile gaze, defying summation.

How to count what grazes vision,
what drifts when you look directly.
Shadows on the retina in a vitreous heaven,

pray for a close-up, one to descend,
strike a horaltic pose — wings spread,
offering to be carved into a totem,

his song a low hiss, his focus on sight
and smell — the gases of decay
leading him to carrion.

If his meal is in the middle of the road,
drivers must veer, he refuses
to remove his bald, red head

from the cavities of roadkill.
Scavenger, clean up our thoughts.
Pick through the dead little mammals,

the sightless young. 
Reveal yourself. Let us swerve
for god’s vital work.

Lisa Kelly's second collection, The House of the Interpreter (Carcanet), is a Poetry Book Society Summer Recommendation. Her first collection, A Map Towards Fluency (Carcanet), was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize 2021. She has single-sided deafness and co-edited What Meets the Eye (Arachne Press). She is Chair of Magma Poetry.