from Issue #2: Poetry by Antigone Kefala

Photo (CC) Dale Gillard @ Flickr

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Pilgrims’ Tales

When they reached the place
they waited in the dusty courts
with the stray dogs.
Slowly the landmarks
of their days drifted away
and imperceptibly they sunk
into the decomposing silence.

When they came back
their eyes were scorched
their hands like open wounds
the road, they said,
nothing but fire
no coolness
as they were promised
in the fables.

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The Fatal Queen

She watched us from the dais,
her eyes full of a savage
desperation
she was trying to contain
her voice rasping.

She seemed suspended
above the cliffs
of a dark, frozen sea
already disconnected
from the everyday
impatient, inside her
all was set
for the last killing.

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ABOUT THE POET

Antigone Kefala is a poet and prose writer of Greek-Romanian heritage. She has worked as a university administrator and as an arts administrator with the Australia Council for the Arts. She left with her family after the Second World War and moved to Greece and then to New Zealand, where she studied French literature at Victoria University of Wellington. She has lived in Sydney since the sixties. Her books have been translated into Greek, French, Czech and Romanian. Her latest publications are Sydney Journals (Giramondo, 2008), Absence: New and Selected Poems (Hale & Iremonger, 1998), Max – The Confessions of a Cat (Owl Press, 2009).