Four Sublime Poems by Adele Ogier Jones

 

Letters to Rosa Luxemburg

 

If I had written to you today

as I walked through the forest

deep in the evening remembering you

in prison silent with your thinking

interrupted only by an old woman

telling you she also liked to read books

what would I have said?

 

That I missed you,

thought of you,

and wanted you back

that I could not bear the thought of you

silently at the pond

fixing the design of shrubs and trees

around it in your mind

to block out hopelessness.

 

Could I have told you that I felt you near

as I saw beside me,

violets filling the banks

falling over edges

themselves in desperation to find the sun

just as you longed for it in prison.

 

Could I have sent you dried flowers

in the hope that they might reach you

get past the censors checking withholding

postponing your letters to break you.

 

Would you understand the purple blossom

as a sign of my admiration

a friendship never faltering

even though it could mean my investigation.

 

Could I have filled the silent echoes

with words to share those you sent me

telling me to be strong, not to lose heart

to keep my head up.

 

Your strength, determination, belief

in the darkest humidity of cells

seems never broken

even while you told me not to be crushed

not forsaken.

 

Are there any words I could send

which would ever match those you sent me.

 

What else would you have written

if I could have passed this on to you

gazing deep into the pond

tempting the bravest soul?

 

Perhaps you saw the bird

with orange speckled breast

perhaps it danced distracting you

just as the lone actor entices me today

deep into the black forest.

 

            (letter to Rosa Luxemburg responding to hers from prison)

 

 

Where birdsong greets morning.

 

Your letters

barely touch

on war

looming

canons booming

in the distance

you censored your words

protecting comrades.

 

Your letters

enquiring their health

by name, urging them

to stand their ground

and would do today

if you were here

as if your person

were in your pages

 

In your words

 

I see in your words a poem

as you wrote of the blue tit

 

It went out of my heart

For there was so much

Conveyed

By this hasty call

From the distance

 

for the bird shrilled twice

in brief succession

zizi bae – zizi bae – zizi bae

and then all was still.

 

And I see you in the distance

long after

not forgotten though your life

was stilled

you dared not write beliefs

beyond the garden

and traipsing through

a wild Mediterranean

yet I hear how you would write

still today

of this groaning earth.

 

Your letters

called from the distance

bursting through walls

and years where they could

not be silenced.

 

Your letters

singing

loving

where speaking out about

atrocities

injustice

inhumanity

was silenced.

 

Your letter hiding

behind beauty

remembered

reflections

of a peaceful world.

 

          (letter to Rosa Luxemburg for hers on 23rd May 1917)

When the nightingale ceased singing

 

If I had been with you in those gardens

Waiting for the concert of the nightingale

To end

Overture to another secret love

Who sang to you those magic words

You translated as

-          Gligligligligliglick!

 

Hiding there in shrubbery green

Listening for the dark tones of the solo

To finish

That overture to love you recall

In your later cell remembering

Its writhes and twists

-          When danger threatened.

 

If only you had known the danger

Facing you, waiting for that one false

Note spoken

Announced in peace though taken more

As enmity, criticism

Of state and its decisions

-          That bird, that plaintive cry.

 

            (letter to Rosa Luxemburg for hers on 2^nd May 1917)

A member of The Poetry Society (UK), Adèle writes creatively as Ogiér Jones. She has four collections of poems, including Beyond the Blackbird Field (Ginninderra Press, 2016) and three chapbooks in the Pocket Poets series, also with Ginninderra Press. She appears in numerous anthologies, e-poetry- and journals, and has been shortlisted and awarded in poetry competitions. These poems are in response to her reading Rose Luxemburg Briefe aus dem Gefängnis – Letters from Prison written in 1916-1917.