Leslie Hakim-Dowek

Twilight Island | Twilight Island is a poetic contemplation of a time spent on a volcanic island. The book resonates with several subtexts of themes and cycles. A succession of vistas, from volcanic craters to desert plateaux, is juxtaposed with landmarks, memorials and recreational spaces where spectacles are set to unfold in a succession of endless tourism. A polarising axis is drawn between the earthly transformations over millennia, laid bare on this island, and the minute cycles of a summer season and the coming of age of two girls, my twin daughters. Within this brief reflective bracket lies the vast wilderness, an earthly stage on which generational rites and rituals come into being but to which, we remain largely oblivious to.

A silent equation unbinds deep rings of fire,
Palpable in damp ravines
And oceans gathering around the island's edge.

Out of the parabola of the skies, 
Summer galloped in with its sad stillness
Full of slow time and blinding rays.

As time slips into stones,
Shallow moons fall into tepid lakes
And girls hover in their reflections
Living scene by scene.

I once lapsed into numbness,
Perhaps I am here, or lost dreaming of
A colony of peaks soaring into orbs of distance,
Rhythmic forest that swell as lunatic terrors
And, diagonal rains which seep into
Shadows of feathers, shadows of needles,
Full of breath and the holler of myths.

We are at the end and the beginning.
www.lesliehakimdowek.com