We are starting 2013 with a bang by featuring new work from one of my fellow OCA creative writing tutors, poet John Drew.
I'm currently enjoying John's collections The Lesser Vehicle (Bloodaxe, 1986) and In the Temple of Kali (The Cambridge Poetry Workshop, 1991).
The two photographs below were taken in Mumbai when John and his wife Rani (also pictured) visited as writers. John has also read with a distant relation of mine, the famous Indian poet Nissim Ezekiel.
ERMES
The Earth shook and the skies grew dark in Mirandola.
A cathedral wall fell and a town hall. Also in Modena.
Never before such an earthquake in the Emilia Romagna.
The pigeons sigh in the pines, oregano, rosemary hang on the air.
The old hawk is not to be found in his high square tower
Singing praise of his sister as a partisan in the War.
We loved him as he sat frail at a last grand feast,
Able to eat little, glass raised in defiant toast,
Nodding off as if in sleep as a man past living must.
What force then lifted his hawk-like face and drove his voice
To speak of each of us there with such a precise grace?
What more can we ask of this world before we pass,
As he does now, out of it? Only the lilt of his voice
Remains, along with his empty glass and a rind of cheese.
From the very gates of the Underworld, he sent us his messages.
HEART OF DARKNESS
She was sitting up top on a bus out of Hackney,
The young woman with spiky hair
and glitter all over her face.
She was reading a book, putting it down
every few minutes
To primp the spikes in her hair.
No, she wasn’t reading the book
as part of a course
(A presumptuous question, you silly old fool).
A Swedish friend had recited,
We live, as we dream, alone,
And she just had to read such a book.
Had I seen Apocalypse Now?
And what of the war on Iraq?
Her face had a glitter all of its own
As she spoke of dishonesty, empire and lies.
The last I saw of her, she was a whirl of hands
Among a row of heads on top of the bus
As it beat upstream into Euston.
I'm currently enjoying John's collections The Lesser Vehicle (Bloodaxe, 1986) and In the Temple of Kali (The Cambridge Poetry Workshop, 1991).
The two photographs below were taken in Mumbai when John and his wife Rani (also pictured) visited as writers. John has also read with a distant relation of mine, the famous Indian poet Nissim Ezekiel.
ERMES
The Earth shook and the skies grew dark in Mirandola.
A cathedral wall fell and a town hall. Also in Modena.
Never before such an earthquake in the Emilia Romagna.
The pigeons sigh in the pines, oregano, rosemary hang on the air.
The old hawk is not to be found in his high square tower
Singing praise of his sister as a partisan in the War.
We loved him as he sat frail at a last grand feast,
Able to eat little, glass raised in defiant toast,
Nodding off as if in sleep as a man past living must.
What force then lifted his hawk-like face and drove his voice
To speak of each of us there with such a precise grace?
What more can we ask of this world before we pass,
As he does now, out of it? Only the lilt of his voice
Remains, along with his empty glass and a rind of cheese.
From the very gates of the Underworld, he sent us his messages.
HEART OF DARKNESS
She was sitting up top on a bus out of Hackney,
The young woman with spiky hair
and glitter all over her face.
She was reading a book, putting it down
every few minutes
To primp the spikes in her hair.
No, she wasn’t reading the book
as part of a course
(A presumptuous question, you silly old fool).
A Swedish friend had recited,
We live, as we dream, alone,
And she just had to read such a book.
Had I seen Apocalypse Now?
And what of the war on Iraq?
Her face had a glitter all of its own
As she spoke of dishonesty, empire and lies.
The last I saw of her, she was a whirl of hands
Among a row of heads on top of the bus
As it beat upstream into Euston.
No comments:
Post a Comment