PETER RILEY


1

The towns along the Tiza

O the towns along the Tiza, the flaking walls, ragged squares, Habsburg 
halls and communist concrete eroding in the river wind, people 
wandering the streets or leaning against walls on market day holding 
the one object they’ve got for sale, a model house or a packet of tea...  
A shepherd with staff and cloak stands outside the Hotel Tiza, gypsies 
in orange skirts and wide-rimmed black hats cluster on corners... 
Border towns stuck with closed borders, holes in the roads, buffalo 
carts ignoring the traffic lights, broken bridges over the Tiza / The last 
offices in the west heated by small woodstoves, desks heaped with 
impractical directives, as the first bits of snow descend and everything 
gets dark together. 


2

KALOTASZEG


Low hills carved into terraces
neglected now, wild grass. Trans-
sylvanian air, a music
as of saddened royalty

Who became migrant workers, drivers
of long-distance lorries
with the same patience, the same
gateway, sun and rope

Moon and string, forget slowly
the star’s aim on the bare hills
remember in a different script
the answer of the dull beast
snorting behind the gate

Consequence at world pace, 
slower than the death birds.



3

FRUSTOVENTO


The wind walks the grass. Bee orchids, crickets.
The good, solid house, the stone house 
on a platform rising from the brush of the hillside 
under Monte  Subasio. Clover. Trickling water.
The closed house.  Platform for an angel’s foot.

An angel from the paintings over the hill. Voices
gently in the ear of the sleeper, negociating
a temporary pact with the  gravities of the world.
Crotchet of green leaf chained to the solar system
where the angel’s foot descends, and lightly rests

For a moment.  On a roof tile, or neatly avoiding
a buttercup, and is gone.  Does the hero’s heart
burn for something grander?  Or the earth beg release
from hearts with no time for such slightness? 
Begs and pleads, for the tear to fall when due.

4

SCHIELE


The skin also
where the foot landed
touched blue and green
faint bruising, thin membrane, semi- 
transparent, letting through
the shades of society. Eyes
staring out in alarm.



5


Stuck in Vienna for two weeks watching CNN every night


Of course we inhabit decisions
not made by us or anyone 
we can trace, decisions
threaded into the streets and forests
from impossible distance.

Forgetting Vietnam, forgetting Thursday,
day to day, door to door,  
bomb first, forget later.

Walk the streets, drifted children.
Walk the forest, learn to die. 

In this house
Franz Schubert wrote
An die ferne geliebte baby,
where did our love go?



6


Room 40, Früstückepension Caroline, Gudrunstrasse 138, Wien 9


The courtyard tree swaying in the wind.
If the business is still going strong
how can you bear to die?  If the space
owned is cleansed of failure, the walls
impeccably bare, the one tall tree reaching
beyond the courtyard roofs and so
catching the wind, how can anyone
bear to live? What is there to forget? 

As if every block didn’t conceal a history,
the pink arches, the eagles with straight wings,
the world’s savagery always waiting. 

Tonight fans, family, and friends
are all together, in little space,
commanding the language.





7

ACROSS CENTRAL EUROPE


How much more is there to add to what
we can never forget, and what
will happen to it in the end when all
the memory goes out like a light switched off?

Forest and  mountain without end.
As night falls clustered lights, of villages 
and small towns on ridge tops or the sides 
of big valleys among deepening greens.

Ride on old car, bockwürst at the services,
snow squalls, what’s the future of “memory”?---
keep it rolling towards us with the  road
under and the dark over all coming down together
                                    to the cathedral lights of Limburg.

8

THE CATHEDRAL LIGHTS OF LIMBURG 


To shine in your eyes like
the cathedral lights of Limburg.

And in the morning watch the frost
rising from the river.