Ben Keatinge
Saint Atanas Cave Church, Kališta
Your crypt of rock is hidden
your stone is scotched with lesions,
candles drip below disfigured saints,
your script I cannot read.
I stoop in the cool air
clean as bone, smooth as the lake outside.
Memorial Ossuary, Veles
For lack of air the damp creeps
the walls give way to bones beneath.
Ben Keatinge is a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of English, Trinity College Dublin. His poems have been published in The Stony Thursday Book, Orbis, Eborakon, The Galway Review, Agenda, Cassandra Voices, Flare and in Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets (Dedalus Press, 2019). He taught English literature for nine years at South East European University, North Macedonia and he has travelled widely in the Balkans. He is the editor of Making Integral: Critical Essays on Richard Murphy (Cork University Press, 2019).
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