Three Poems by Mina Gorji

Thaw

At what point
does a life
held in ice
begin to cease? 

*

A woodsman
carrying a heart
(still warm)
out of the forest. 

*

I am standing
at the forest edge –
where foxgloves
will appear.
Ground is hard,
white with frost.

Auguries

Some days we turn our faces to the skies, 

looking for something, for a sign,  

and see a crow disguised  

as its own shadow 

disappear

into a hungry line. 

Or pale grey clouds  

blown in from somewhere else

darken to forms – 

perhaps a lion,  

or a citadel of nimbus,

empty, almost

luminous. 

Tinnitus in Nineveh

The library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh

held many remedies:

if the hands of a ghost seize on a man,

and his ears sing or whisper

stuff them with charms,

fumigate with rue or frankincense,

find a blacksmith or a poet

to distract the gnat

with clang

of metal

striking

metal,

chisel

striking

stone.

Mina Gorji was born in Iran and lives in Cambridge, where she is an Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge, a fellow of Pembroke College, and a mother of two young daughters. Her first collection, art of escape (Carcanet), was published in 2020. Her work has also appeared in a number of magazines, including Poetry Review, PN Review, Magma, bath magg, London Magazine, and in Bloodaxe's Staying Alive and The Forward Prize Anthology 2020. Her second collection, Scale, will be published by Carcanet in July 2022.