An excerpt from Poetry by Antigone Kefala

The following excerpt is from a sequence featured in Poetry, one of two commemorative editions bringing together the work of Antigone Kefala published in April 2025.

Absence

I

The coffin arrived
full of polished brass
then the priest
giving instructions.
The first
bent down and kissed it
but the second
kept eating earth from
the golden top of the coffin
munching it
I could see straight
into the cavernous mouth.

II

Then from this height,
greater than I imagined,
they threw me in.
The water heavy
with no feel to it
just this fear on all sides,
the waves held in the air
solid marble
glossy in the ashen light.

I was swimming in a sea
of tombstones
as far as I could see
the surface crowded with
these frozen waves
tombstones to the horizon
ambushed by lifeless bodies
floating in the night.