Ober & Ward – May 2017

Simon Ward and Cara Ober traded art and words. Cara shared this piece, entitled “Meshuggeneh,” with Simon:

In response, Simon wrote this poem:

The Memory

I heard a captive yell
echo over centuries
to reach people who still feel
hundreds of years from this day
those innocent ears
and nascent hearts
and innocuous
empathetic eyes.

We all find out eventually.

I look over my
embryonic flesh
to see lines
scored deep
as the gulf that exists
between they and I,
and fingertips marred
with sanguinary stains
never to be washed clean.

I hang my head
with what this flesh
of a nation
is guilty of,

shackling me to their memory.

* * * * *

Simon shared this poem with Cara:

An Atmospheric Railway

I think about those mornings,
the sea spread out like lines across paper,
rippling words in falling crests

on the shore, sifting shards
of shells while the water drowns
sound like a vacuum,

like hissing trains that come and go and stop,
gathering torpid travellers

dragged across open country,
passing split-second scenes:
rolling hills and farmland fences

and animals huddled together,
all equal with some more equal,
a work-horse dragging beams

with Stakhanovite strength,
and a pig out of its pen, beady eyes
blinking in the midday sun.

In response, Cara made this image, entitled “This Train Don’t Stop”: