'Jurgensen derives most of his inspiration from three main areas of experience: illness and death, love and sexual passion, and…the conflict of two cultures,…the problem of identity…What I offer is what I believe best represents his work by the only valid criteria known to me, those of emotional genuineness and artistic integrity.'
Dimitris Tsaloumas
Selected Poems 1972-1986,
ed. by Dimitris Tsaloumas,
Albion Press, Brisbane
1987
the onion
love was
the
onion
we peeled
and cut
and sliced
looking for
the heart
but
merely found
it spiced
to tears
others
tasted
it
and liked
the flavour
inquisitors' dialogue
'who's the young
witch
burning at the stake?'
'it is language
suffering its
make.'
ward twelve
fearful of an overdose they wake me
to observe the
strangling
of your voice by telephone
three times a day
with patience and
self-discipline
there is they tell me every chance
only a few silences
ago
their treatment would not have responded
i trust the safety of
that distance
the nearness of a fatal past we did not meet
my presence
here is to regain
the will to fight deadly addiction