‘Those Girls’ and ‘Knossos 1962’, two poems by David Whitwell
One of the key threads of the Many Lives of a Snake Goddess project is the collection of re-imaginings and reuses of these faience figures from the time of their discovery to the present. They have made appearances in dance, opera, art, music, novels, poetry and much more. The project has, to date, collected around 300 distinctive modern reuses, and it seeks to examine each re-imagining in its own context - and where possible in dialogue with the creators.
We are delighted here to share two unpublished poems by David Whitwell which are inspired by the Snake Goddesses and by a visit to Knossos and Heraklion in 1962.
Those Girls
The ruins were still there
long after the people were dust:
their language forgotten.
So the Greeks made up stories
about a half human monster
to explain what they saw around them:
but they knew nothing.
Their wild speculations confuse us still,
as we struggle to make sense
- always of course in culturally sensitive ways -
for example those little female figures,
whose bare breasts have gone round the world,
used now to promote holidays in the sun.
An image like that sets us to thinking
about goddesses and cults
as though such things really shape the world.
When what really changes nations
is the endless restless movement of people,
always seeking a better life,
just like now.
And the girls - what were they really?
Carnival queens, exotic dancers,
maybe snake charmers -
brought in as entertainment
on a hot Cretan summer night.
(Written after a talk given to the Lansdown Poets by Professor Nicoletta Momigliano).
Knossos 1962
Germanos they shouted, everywhere we went.
Bleached by the sun, we looked like Germans,
the enemy, daring to come back
after all they’d done.
Germanos they kept on.
At last they smiled
We were just boys,
they made us welcome.
I remember Heraklion,
staying with Dr Yamalakis - such a kind man,
though we lacked a common language.
He showed us his collection -
Minoan relics given by patients
too poor to pay for treatment.
His wife talked to us in French
about to her brothers, up in the mountains,
what they had done to them, during the war.
She hissed as she spoke about torture
and how she hated Germans.
We were eating outside under an oil lamp
but I was no traveller,
couldn’t take the food,
fed mine to the dog under the table.
She never knew.
And at Knossos there wasn’t much magic.
The ruins seemed to have been rebuilt
reinforced with concrete,
painted gaudy colours.
And we were too hot.
David Whitwell is the author of ‘The Ruins of Summer’: https://redcliffepress.co.uk/product/the-ruins-of-summer/