#2039 - in Turner's least corners

 

2039

6.212

31.vii.25

in Turner’s least corners

                                                                                    

a diffuse mist

lost souls suggest

 

here’s Hannibal’s snowstorm crossing the alps

the elephant in the distance – a speck

 

a storm of spears for supplication

here’s Napoleon too

and odds against

 

the everyday fury loosed for occasion

 

it’s as if, were there just a name to call

one would be able to do something

but as it is, peering in to disaster

 

we bring to the picture

the faceless attitude shown

 

nothing to commit

 

these falls are of an untethered heaven

here’s allegorical beauty of a wreck

 

the heaving and the hauling, the hunger march

the endless war, the elements

 

all vain as per a purpose lacking

 

the ever present multitude presses on

and on towards their doom

 

so show

best works are least complete

 

and as for the stokes of the brush

there’s a kind of callous enthusiasm

as if matter-of-fact, this fascination

 

light smitten

like the sea goes down with the ship

 

we just happen to be here

 

#2038 - a garden in the afterlife

 

2038

6.211

30.vii.25

a garden in the afterlife

a feast for Nebamun

 

an entertainment for the ages

 

to count the geese, the cattle

 

wine garlanded in jug

a pile of sycamore figs

loaves oven hot yet

 

here are the sheaves

the desert hares hung

Dorcas gazelle

 

a prayer for the one I serve

 

and the girls?

they are dancing naked in the forever

ready for this bliss

 

it is a painted world

lotus flowers

plain tiger butterflies over all

 

after life

this beauty of this

better than we leave

 

how fortunate

to count so far

survive a life

 

as the sky persists, so all of this

 

marshes teeming

and our triumph over

 

but the sun god hunts light’s enemies

 

the name of Amun is excised

 

it also survives to us – the mudbrick drab

death’s dim light

a god in each least corner

 

clay sherds for senet

 

 

the river’s wash

 

the fisherman – one who consorts with crocodiles

 

let’s one more game then

swig of the finest

bone for dice

 

as one scribe to another

in time beyond all time that was

I keep a record here 

#2037 - heads off just for fun

 

2037

6.210

29.vii.25

heads off just for fun

 ekphrastic for Karel Appel’s 1949 ‘Hip Hip Hooray’

they are the ghosts of party was

you can tell by the claws

the blind and outward blink

 

matchstick legs

the mermaid fire

in thistle mitts

 

even a flower’s tail to grip

like coral in bottles

sprung fully armed

 

hearts bending

breast afloat

strange creatures

 

and they hold the key

they’re reaching

and we’re just in touch

 

as pet this our cast an eye

some were once monsters of the loch

and here they have their day 

#2036 - deciding to be nobody's ancestor

 

2036

6.209

28.vii.25

deciding to be nobody’s ancestor

 

coming from everywhere, everything, everyone

child of stone and stream and sky

 

drawing on the ever breath

as creature of the green

 

as eyes up

brief while here to wonder

 

with some least griefs to go

charmed with the sphere’s rotation, tilt

 

the trooping of the seasons, treelit

sunshone grass a aglow

 

here for the fascination

for what can be understood

 

so all of us at once

the song before the words are lit

 

as all our due respect’s towards

all that can’t be known

 

tell all! tell on!

 

so sacred to our secret selves

so secret to a truth

 

 

 

 

#2035 - in each word

 

2035

6.208

27.vii.25

in each word

for wise surprise

 

are the echoes

lives having dreamt

 

as we forget, go on

word’s a clock in me

and one’s another

 

there was always before

though time has to have been upon it

 

once and a word to follow

 

the thousand pictures in

the telling and out

a road’s unravel

 

each with its horror and joy

just a word cast

 

who were we?

and who was I?

 

a pause to ask

 

how was it?

each in a word to stumble with

 

and insofar as that

just a word with you

 

each who lived it, lost

 

and now the cheering

now the curse

 

there was never a word meant only once

meant just the one thing

 

each is a well and a wheel

each word its own round run

we wind it with the ear

it smooths and it sharpens the tongue

 

each word a maze of mansions

 

and will you believe?

 

you are not who they were

but the words of them come again

come to you

 

mind your peas, queues

grip of a myth

 

nor need they have ever been meant to have given

 

it’s true that I was never there

but come again to this my home

the word

 

strange as I am

as each must be

 

life’s water in the word awash

 

the drowning in the word

our fire

 

the mists of it, the must

 

I think of the nonsense they believed

think of my own nonsense too

 

how all of this is lost to the time

where I was never far

 

 

#2034 - casting for a shadow somewhere

 

2034

6.207

26.vii.25

casting for a shadow somewhere

poem in the quick of go

 

for wise surprise

 

 

made a tune out of the day

words from light

 

take alphabet for infinite

 

draw time from the clock and spread it

wide of the mark

 

rhythm of hills

grass to sway

 

I was listening

 

to see where life has been in me

little skin tracks, unnervings

 

the prayer to for no one there

 

my nutshell miracle unbound

 

gift of a guess and gone