A View from London

Photo by Susan Curtis

Susan Curtis is a writer and translator from Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin. She is also the founding editor of Istros Books, a publishing house which specialises in translated work from the Balkans and south-east Europe. I’ve complained so often about the lack of translated literature into English and then Susan creates Istros Books, what a godsend! You can find out why I’ve enjoyed these books from a sample couple of reviews I’ve written – of Alma Lazarevska’s Death in the Museum of Modern Art and Life Begins on Friday by Ioana Pârvulescu. For a full list of their titles you can visit the Istros website.
Susan has lived in various parts of Europe, including Slovenia, Croatia and Italy, and now lives in London, which is the setting for her poem.

Lockdown London
(with thanks to Blake)

As silent as Christmas Day,
the flag poles on Regent Street
rattling in their brackets,
the furling and unfurling of wings
as birds reclaim the skies
and the black asphalt laid bare,
revealing undulations of the land beneath;
the fields and hills and earth that once
meant home. Freed now of the static
of traffic that scatters our vision,
our horizon has been restored.
While the tiger in the zoo,
still silent in his symmetry,
surveys the fearful passersby,
caged by their own uncertainty
and the dread hammer of wild
time, unchained.