{"id":2001,"date":"2023-11-29T13:07:18","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T21:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lawrencedurrell.org\/wp_durrell\/?page_id=2001"},"modified":"2026-01-23T19:11:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T03:11:06","slug":"white-mice-poems-2023","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/lawrencedurrell.org\/wp_durrell\/white-mice\/white-mice-poems-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"White Mice 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

Preface<\/strong><\/h2>\n

As the International Lawrence Durrell Society prepares to convene in Athens in July 2024, it seemed most appropriate to center the 2023 White Mice Poetry Contest on theme of \u201cRuins.\u201d<\/p>\n

Destruction is everywhere in our world\u2014major wars with ruthless bombing and loss of life proliferate as we speak\u2014and yet this theme also reminds us of the intertwined complexities of life. Not only the ongoing cycles of yin and yang of Taoism, or the unfolding patterns of planets in astrology, but also the sheer nobility of thought embodied in the Parthenon and other monuments now lost to us. Ruins represent the past\u2014loss, defeat, dissolution, death\u2014yet carry the seeds of new possibilities for the living who experience, learn, and resolve to do better.<\/p>\n

The poems responding to this year\u2019s theme feature not only physical or architectural ruins but also shards or remains of inner life\u2014collapsed relationships, hopes, families, a coherent sense of self. In Suzanne Burns\u2019 \u201cBurnt Offerings,\u201d the speaker\u2019s young sister buries objects and burns a book in the family\u2019s back yard \u201calmost as if the pages were newly born \/ instead of dying. . . .\u201d Dina Friedman\u2019s \u201cDetritus\u201d offers a similar scene, as the speaker\u2019s toddler son adopts a branch of sumac as his pet and strokes \u201cthe leaves all gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Donegal,\u201d by Deborah Doolittle, paints an evocative picture of Irish ruins covered by moss and shrouded by \u201cthin veils\u201d of mist and \u201crain in thick curtains.\u201d Partridge Boswell\u2019s \u201cThe Poet\u2019s Way\u201d traces a literary wandering to a crevasse near a lighthouse \u201cwhere three girls downed a century ago.\u201d We are made aware of the speaker\u2019s solitary clambering, \u201caimless as a poet\u2019s cloud \/ over landscapes real and imagined. . . .\u201d<\/p>\n

In a rare occurrence, William Orem won both second and third prize (all judging was anonymous). \u201cPtochos,\u201d a prose poem, re-creates a memorable scene in which the speaker is approached in his car on an urban street by a beggar with a prosthetic leg he uses as a \u201cdonation bowl.\u201d In \u201cAll things await the day of their breaking,\u201d the speaker notes all the breakable objects of our lives yet realizes \u201cIt\u2019s how the earth is made. \/ I wish it were not so.\u201d And then he turns to his marriage\u2014twenty years old this week\u2014with a vow to \u201ccatch\u201d \u201cwhat snaps, what tumbles.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first-prize-winning poem, \u201cChild of War by Gabrille LeMay, combines two of the worst human tragedies: the devastation of war and the suffering of a child. In this case, a wounded boy with crutches dreams of rescue, of warmth. The initial witness is a photographer, but then the perspective shifts to a sympathetic speaker who hopes to help alleviate the child\u2019s pain, to overcome the death of his mother and somehow manage to cope with \u201ctidal waves of grief.\u201d<\/p>\n

All these poems deal with loss and dissolution, and yet the beauty of the poems, the poignancy of sympathetic observation, brings a humane solace to our contemplation. These endings enrich our lives with connections through time and with a haunting music of remembrance.<\/p>\n

\u2014David Radavich<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

First Prize<\/strong><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

Child of War<\/strong><\/p>\n

Too young to fight, too poor to flee, legions of children
\nscrape out a bare existence in the rubble of Kabul.<\/p>\n

\u2014John F. Burns, The New York Times
\nMagazine, April 2, 1995. Photographs by
\nLaurent Van der Stockt.<\/p>\n

The photographer stands amid shattered Himalayas
\nof ash and fragmented masonry:
\nit\u2019s all that\u2019s left of this city.
\nBombed and bombed again, the solid old buildings
\ncrumbled like stale cake to scatter
\nstones, mortar, chairs, dolls, arms, feet, human
\ndreams everywhere\u2014leaving crushed, blackened heaps
\nfrom which iron wires stick up
\nlike stiffened hairs.<\/p>\n

Here and there, stricken walls still stand, ceilingless,
\neroded at the tops to jagged peaks;
\nin pocked, brittle towers, holes gape brightly
\nwhere bricks were shaken out like rotten teeth.<\/p>\n

Howling gales from the Hindu Kush
\nslam across the land and through the sun-baked ruins
\nflinging dervishes of dust into the air\u2014
\nand threatening to topple the spiderlike tripod
\nplanted in the center of the street: the photographer
\nwipes his stinging eyes and squints into the glare,
\nstraining to see what he\u2019s been coming up behind:<\/p>\n

A small, frail boy on a makeshift bench,
\nstruggling to keep his balance,
\nlooking to the side as if determined not to see<\/p>\n

the pole-like prostheses projecting like antennae
\nfrom the tightly harnessed stumps
\nof what had once been his legs\u2026<\/p>\n

He sits, alone but for the crutches at his side,
\nstaring away to where mountains meet sky\u2014
\nthat elusive place where all brutality ends\u2026<\/p>\n

that magical, tragic paradise
\nwhere blessed amnesia begins\u2014<\/p>\n

The photographer
\ntakes a single picture, uproots his tripod
\nand leaves.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

I wrench the tripod sideways
\nand my Nikon cracks on rocks.
\nI turn to run in swirls of dust
\nso thick I look and look again
\nbut the little boy is lost.
\nEven his bench is lost.
\nSucked into billowing whorls of sand
\nand hissing ropes of wind that snake
\nlike smoke through broken walls:
\nI will catch him as he falls.<\/p>\n

Sky the color of a dead eye
\nhangs in frozen sheets that loom
\nlike grief above my head:
\nmy legs are trapped in lead\u2026<\/p>\n

I want
\nI want
\na magical horse
\nto gallop me up to the sky\u2014
\nmy arms embracing his surging neck
\nthe stones the dolls the bricks no longer
\nbashing their way through my head\u2014<\/p>\n

Some wood for fire I am cold
\n\u2014wild\u2014
\nmy lungs burnt out by dust I cannot
\nfind my shattered lens it cost
\nso much
\nMy mouth on fire
\nmy tongue seared dry
\ngasping hauling
\nred-soaked ropes
\nI raise my fantastical tent\u2014<\/p>\n

Flaming shards of window sash
\nslap out like molten knives\u2014
\nmy tent in hell
\nits ropes on fire
\nmy entire flimsy orphanage
\nexploding in crimson mist<\/p>\n

I pound the stakes with bloodied fists
\nthe boy lies screaming on the ground
\nhis crutches shoot up in a blast of flame
\nto ricochet off in the wind\u2014<\/p>\n

My tent now tightly raised I call
\nCome in, my child\u2014come in\u2026<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Come in, my child\u2014come in.
\nCome in out of the wind.
\nJoin hands with me that we may fly from here
\ndeep in the warmth of our dreams,
\nwhere the sapphire-studded Amu Darya
\nflows in freedom and grace\u2014
\nand where roses that bloom on its velvety banks
\ngrow as big as your face!<\/p>\n

We will ride as one on the finest steeds
\nfrom the stables of Kataghan,
\nwhose bridles are trimmed in hammered gold
\nand bits that flash white in the sun\u2026<\/p>\n

We will gallop up into the mountains,
\nwhere fleecy sheep and snow-white goats
\ndoze upon carpets of jade\u2026
\nwhere rolling skies of lapis lazuli
\nand tumbling hills of blood-red rubies
\nstretch further than eyes can see\u2014<\/p>\n

Listen to the wind in the distance:
\nit brings the songs of the leopards, cheetahs, and wolves
\nand the scents of all that you crave\u2026
\nWe will ride that wind through amethyst shade
\nand burst out into that golden place
\nwhere melons, figs, and wine-swollen plums
\nwill drench us in fragrant waves:
\nbeauty and food and joy enough
\nto last us the rest of our lives\u2026<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

The rest of his life is coming
\nbrutal and swift. He is homeless,
\ncast adrift: a sea of flame
\nbeats against the borders of his sanity.<\/p>\n

Brutal and swift, he is homeless,
\nhis mother dead\u2026overwhelming agony
\nbeats against the borders of his sanity
\nand down where his legs used to be;<\/p>\n

His mother dead, overwhelming agony
\nshoots from oozing stumps; the metal stilts
\ndown where his legs used to be
\nare what he wakes to shrieking\u2026<\/p>\n

The oozing stumps, the metal stilts
\nare all he has left;
\nare what he wakes to shrieking,
\nthrashing in his nest of sooty bricks\u2026<\/p>\n

They\u2019re all he has left\u2026
\nHe stares ahead, numb from crying,
\nthrashing in his nest of sooty bricks
\nand sending tidal waves of grief into the morning;<\/p>\n

He stares ahead, numb from crying,
\ncast adrift on a sea of flame\u2014
\nand a tidal wave the size of
\nthe rest of his life is coming\u2014<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
\nBefore us pass\u2019d the door of Darkness through,
\nNot one returns to tell us of the Road,
\nWhich to discover we must travel too.<\/p>\n

\u2014from The Rub\u00e1iy\u00e1t of Omar Khayy\u00e1m.<\/p>\n

\u2014Gabrielle LeMay<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Second Prize<\/strong><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ptochos<\/strong><\/p>\n

Somewhere far out North Capitol Street, urban twilight, waiting in my father\u2019s red Plymouth while my date ran into a glassed-off building\u2014I think she worked for a law office there, I think she had forgotten a contract oath\u2014it\u2019s been decades now. I remember the lust of a young man\u2019s breath, mouth sticky, adrenaline making my finger-ends tap; whatever struck the window was loud. Too startled to respond with anger, I cranked down the glass (car windows had rotating handles then) and saw the beggar holding out a prosthetic leg. Pink, scuffed plastic, not even the color of his skin, his other hand rudely gripping the Plymouth\u2019s roof while he balanced, dancing, on the living foot. Having nothing else, he was using the scooped-out part where the stump fits as a donation bowl. Inside its mouth, a scattering of resentful coins. I added some dollar or two without comment, wanting only to escape the odor, this moment, wanting only to close the window glass against my shame. Then, later that night, naked, and entering her: my hand, reaching into emptiness: my empty hand, reaching into emptiness.<\/p>\n

\u2014William Orem<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Third Prize<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

All things await the day of their breaking<\/strong><\/p>\n

for Lauren<\/em><\/p>\n

All things await the day of their breaking.
\nEvery object friable this jelly jar<\/p>\n

in your fingers, holding its scoop of purple
\nFebruary morning<\/p>\n

that China cup eggwhite dish
\non the papered shelf contain
\nwithin themselves anticipation<\/p>\n

of their crack, shatter
\nsplash,
\nthe glittering; the sigh. Each stone floor<\/p>\n

yearns upward toward each dropping plate.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s how the earth is made;
\nI wish it were not so.<\/p>\n

Marble tiles and vinyl sing all day<\/p>\n

of the wine glasses\u2019 rosy approach.
\nBut you and I, my own\u2014<\/p>\n

to me married twenty years this week,
\nto whom this human song\u2014<\/p>\n

risen together and warming a muffin,
\nsqueezing shoulders in good-morning fog,
\ncan mend these bits:<\/p>\n

what snaps, what tumbles,
\nlet us vow,<\/p>\n

again this starting year
\nand all of that to come, we\u2019ll catch.<\/p>\n

\u2014William Orem<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Honorable Mention<\/strong><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Poet\u2019s Way<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014Sheep\u2019s Head, West Cork<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026wends from walled paddocks through a mute glen of sea grass curried
\nby ceaseless susurration gleaning secrets from a pentameter of countless
\nsteps who\u2019ve passed here one to the next \u2026and by the time you reach<\/p>\n

the lighthouse and peer into a tidal crevasse where three girls drowned
\na century ago and so added their names to the cliffs\u2019 brutal beauty\u2026
\nand see the stray lamb suckling his stray mother where the land ends<\/p>\n

and wonder how sheep could wander so far in a shepherd\u2019s dream
\nand what moved people to farm such rocky desolate slopes where
\nwind tears at mandrake roots, and why still they try\u2014unless perhaps<\/p>\n

the gale\u2019s plaintive howl reminds them every moment to joyfully toss
\ntheir entire life into the scales of fate\u2026and by the time you pass a small
\nshrine tucked into the cliffside\u2014Our Lady of the Wayside\u2014her open<\/p>\n

arms and beatific gaze imparting succoring grace to any wayward
\ntraveler in need of rest or strength, plodding hungrily up to the car
\npark\u2019s stone caf\u00e9 to brave the tour bus crowd after communing all<\/p>\n

day with metaphysics of wind and sea\u2014the solitary self, a high cairn
\nset in stark relief against the sky\u2026straining, reaching out to touch
\nwhat\u2019s either light in god\u2019s face or the backside of just another clich\u00e9,<\/p>\n

before your soul can get its bearings and shrink\u2026you leave their safe
\ncomplacent numbers behind to amble final miles on legs gone slack,
\nyour sun- and salt-lashed face glowing transfigured by forces no mill<\/p>\n

or pen can harness, your spirit untamable and wild as white horses
\ngalloping across the bay\u2026it\u2019s impossible to say where exactly,
\nwhich view among hundreds, what beauty too breathless to be held<\/p>\n

or loss too sad to retell, what stretch of rock or dirt or bog sacrificed
\nitself to the gust that blew your heart open, which stile you clambered
\nover, meandering unmown fields of farms perennially on the edge of ruin,<\/p>\n

trusting a well-trod thread as your head wandered aimless as a poet\u2019s cloud
\nover landscapes real and imagined\u2026fingering scales laden with the weight
\nof unshorn wool, turning your back on numbers and stones when the nurse<\/p>\n

weighs you from birth until your last appointment\u2019s intake, every measuring
\nup a gathering and scattering until even that staunch superstition fades
\nand falls away in the joyous mournful moan of your mother\u2019s selkie<\/p>\n

voice drifting out with the tide. You toss your entire life in anyway,
\nshattered and unrecognizable to anyone but you, burnished clean
\nof every bright path, tried or true, the fleet shadow of every thought.<\/p>\n

\u2014Partridge Boswell<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In Donegal<\/strong><\/p>\n

So much moss covers what was lost.
\nOld men unearth the turf one shovel<\/p>\n

at a time. Mist descends in thin veils.
\nRain in thick curtains. Nothing is<\/p>\n

certain. Not even the dirt beneath
\nthe feet. To be in Donegal<\/p>\n

is to dig deep, dream big. The sweep
\nof clouds along the mountainsides<\/p>\n

cling like sheep; all those empty hearths
\nand roofless walls could make you weep.<\/p>\n

\u2014Deborah Doolittle<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Detritus<\/strong><\/p>\n

My son parades a sumac branch,
\ninsisting it’s his favorite pet,
\na mouse without a name.<\/p>\n

He covers her with rotting leaves
\nand reads a book he\u2019s memorized
\nwhile wind blows off the crumpled leaves<\/p>\n

detaching from the mother branch,
\nan end to sunny, leafy days,
\nNovember gardens marked by space<\/p>\n

the light too scant to see a face.
\nDetritus. The child
\nwho came before its time<\/p>\n

preferred an evening tinged with ice.
\nI asked that being, why didn\u2019t you cling?
\nThe nurse said it\u2019s a natural thing<\/p>\n

to bleed away what can\u2019t be saved:
\na slippery fish, a broken dish.
\nNo form, just guts. The smell of rot.<\/p>\n

My toddler strokes the woody knob
\nhe calls his sumac mouse\u2019s eye.
\nNo face, no nose, no teeth, no hair,<\/p>\n

the leaves all gone, he feeds it air.<\/p>\n

\u2014D. Dina Friedman<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Burnt Offerings<\/strong><\/p>\n

She buried the Ouija board in the side yard
\nclose enough to the cat to pause
\nat the memory of orange and white fur
\nbefore erasing from her mind an answer
\nshe didn\u2019t like to a question I never heard,
\nan unceremonious witnessing, a flat,
\nnarrow coffin just big enough
\nfor game board and planchette.<\/p>\n

Witchy sister who believed
\nin the cleansing power of both moon
\nand earth next buried a ring she found
\nin a parking lot, blue-black sapphire heart
\nlit with a burning white star.
\nFor thirty days of her self-imposed exile
\nring became neighbor to both cat and board,
\nmy sister the grave keeper of things
\nloved and maligned<\/p>\n

as I wondered if the yard could hold
\nall her banishments when the next night
\na spirit compelled her to burn a novel
\nshe made me promise to never read, something
\nabout pets being buried in a pet cemetery,
\nas she started the flames with an old lighter,
\npages folding in on themselves
\nbefore lifting from the earth, leaving
\nbehind the board, the bones, a menagerie
\nof every cursed object,
\nalmost as if the pages were newly born
\ninstead of dying, this possibility of life
\nextinguished as she stomped out the fire
\nwhile planning the next.<\/p>\n

\u2014Suzanne Burns<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Preface As the International Lawrence Durrell Society prepares to convene in Athens in July 2024, it seemed most appropriate to center the 2023 White Mice Poetry Contest on theme of \u201cRuins.\u201d Destruction is everywhere in our world\u2014major wars with ruthless bombing and loss of life proliferate as we speak\u2014and yet this theme also reminds us … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"parent":79,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawrencedurrell.org\/wp_durrell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawrencedurrell.org\/wp_durrell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawrencedurrell.org\/wp_durrell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawrencedurrell.org\/wp_durrell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawrencedurrell.org\/wp_durrell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2001"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lawrencedurrell.org\/wp_durrell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2038,"href":"https:\/\/lawrencedurrell.org\/wp_durrell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2001\/revisions\/2038"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lawrencedurrell.org\/wp_durrell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lawrencedurrell.org\/wp_durrell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}