The remembering cliffs           The cliffs are full of faces, great granite heads           Petrified just as they lifted from sleep.           Stone heads of Martello towers, blank looks           From the concrete helmets of German gun emplacements           Now so assimilated with the granite and the gorse           That they have lost their particular history.           These cliffs are full of faces, a cliffpath walk           Inevitably winds back into past summers           Bringing to mind voices in the wind, my family           Talking as they walked the remembering cliffs.           It is a haunted coastline and every time a corner's turned           I meet my recollection of those who walked here.           I meet myself as a child who thought God had been born           Floating face down in these waters           His face big as a cliff's face, His body a small island.           It was an untaught myth; my secret belief           And life must have teemed about Him like the wrasse           And the gulls and the mackerel crowding close to these cliffs.           The cliffs are full of faces that stare out to find Him           And I stare too -- through the slits and cracks           Of my fortified disbelief, of my adulthood,           Into his comforting presence -- into the sea.           Now the sea seems part of a once swollen certainty           That has yearly drawn away like a lowering tide. Postcard from Ithaca           The leather-faced waiter was once a sailor.           I ask him for one last ouzo and fanta           And in the bay's sleepy wasp-plagued taverna           I awkwardly toast your memory           In this roosting place of homesick dreams.           While the waiter serves a pizza to a German           I'm thinking of my next destination, not this           Hot and resonant Ionian harbour           Berthing that bulbous Cephalonian boat           Its bridge lambent with a crude Poseidon,           But rather somewhere that is beyond Ithaca;                               A new island perhaps, a rumour in the sea                       That makes everything ominous, so even           This warm morning's ricochet of flying fish           Seemed a symbol of the spirit taking wing.                                 We reckoned ourselves to be Ithacans once           But every journey lasts longer than a lifetime.           Today I'll choke up this brine, gulp air again,           Because now there are no deadly opponents           And no-one's calling for clever disguises.                      I wish we'd known that once you' reached Ithaca           You can only move on, like the boat's bored crew            Who count aboard the straggling English tourists.                                              From the bow I watch the waiter's back bent low           In the slow repetitions of his evening. I am leaving for another country                  I require a plane, as it is far from here.           One which will skim so low that I recognise           Individuals I've known through its windows.           And as I circle the smokeless chimney pots           I'll peer into homes that gave me no welcome           Overshadowing them with my perfect wings.           I will stride to the cockpit to take control             For, as predicted, there will be no pilot           And there shall be no-one to guide my landing.           Momentarily, I imagine soaring           Forever, never touching down; a Captain           Of a fragile vessel of wing and prayer.           Even the autopilot has gone off-line           There is nobody near but weird creatures           Not birds, but flying squirrels, airborne spiders,           Nimbi full of sucked up frogs and fishes            Pterodactyls and forgotten animals           Who have learned to spring vehemently upwards.           The sun does not set over the wrinkled sea           I'm racing the sun to another country           Where people amass, awaiting my landfall.           And the astrologers fully expect me           So I sport a full beard for the occasion           As aspects of my deportment were foretold.            Full of hope, I imagine you will be there.            Perhaps you carry a sign, or bear a garland           Of blooms from the surface of a black river.           Or you'll hurry me into a black taxi           To protect me from gathered paparazzi           And astonish me with your dazzling circle.           Will you be there? Or will you be with others?           Or will you hang back, ranked perhaps           By your age, or the love you spilled for me?           If only I was sure you would be there, that           You were awake, waiting among the sleepers           In the tired midnight lobby of the airport.           (c) Peter Kenny 2001
	Peter Kenny The Remembering Cliffs is about returning to Guernsey, where I spent lots of my childhood (see pic above). The second is about Ithaca, the Greek island and home of Homer's hero Odysseus, who spent years trying to return after fighting in the Trojan war -- it's also about my pal Tim Gallagher. The last one is a dream.