Spectator poems
From the magazine

Under Canigou

Stephen Romer
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 16 August 2025
issue 16 August 2025

(for Sonia and Michelle, the gauche mystique)

Liberty guides us

on the narrow path

her ponytail a torch

for the groaning peoples.

Someone has dropped

a bead of pomegranate,

I imagined Kore rapt

in the act of eating

in this shaded place

of wild asparagus,

the surface fissured

where she was taken under.

For a moment I am dazed,

it seems the rocks are glinting, it is

mica, I cannot grasp

this universal flashing

it is mica in the rocks

the rocks glitter,

theotokos is in her

canopy of rock

mica is mined

by the children of Jharkand 

in Bihar state,

we may not wonder

the newfound

torrent surges

below the towering cork-oak, 

it is early spring

the sufferings do not end

the mica flashes

I try to hold this knowledge

in my head.