Month: Nov 2016

f MichelAn

irlandesuk poetry

f MichelAn

The name signed
           in the blood of the Baptist
he who would prepare the way
           the tongue of truth
silenced forever
           the burial of knowledge
the word extinguished
           the struggle between
light and darkness
           chiaoscuro
a life led on the edge
           turmoil consigned
to canvas
           every portrait
a self narrative
           betrayed
by a venal dancer
           violation of violence
the sad geometries
           of repression
right angles
           the steel lattice
the arc of defeat
           a price on his head
the imprisoned mind
           29 August 1608
he who lived
           by the sword
innocence of art
           Caravaggio

John Lyons

Virtue

irlandesuk poetry ,

Virtue

The mind turns to the body
         the body turns to the mind
to thoughts and to the thing
         to the rose and the thought of it
beauty felt in body and mind
         in what we call the heart
or the soul or the spirit
         and that which we most desire
put a name to that face
         put a name to that love
and so in the pronunciation
         infuse that sound with feeling
so that she is always
         on the tip of my tongue

she inseparable
         from her image
every sinew of her being
         condensed into that sound
beauty in the nature
         of her warm soft body
impossible to remove
         from my mind
and so I touch her
         with my words
envelop her
         in the syllables
of these lines
         express the love
of which enough
         is never enough

John Lyons

Childhood memory

irlandesuk poetry ,

Childhood memory

Smoke from a heap of leaves burning
as darkness fell and life smouldered on
 
That night a sharp frost and the following day
awoke to a white lawn crisp under fox foot :
 
if the king is a thing so too a man and a woman
and a child and all bodies made under the sun
 
and so our lives are lived among such things
and yet all things as we know will pass
 
fame and glory and pride and wealth and position
and what remains is what we can secure

against the cold and bitter depredations of dust
the warmth stored in our hearts and in our minds
 
though those too will pass just as the smoke
rose unseen and faded into the sky and the fire died

John Lyons

Life

irlandesuk poetry ,

Life*

Yesterday evening
         as the sun was setting
the sky seared with red light
         thirty or more ducks
flying in that characteristic
          ragtag bobbing V-formation
heading home
         to Crayford Marshes

As Charles Olson puts it
         anger came after man
there is none in nature
         Nature is pure beauty
all life from the division
         from the exuberant
multiplication of single cells
         through the sharing
of cellular resources
         two for the price of one
literally each my other half
         and from this process
the rich complexity of the rose
         of the spider’s web
or the webbed feet
         of amphibians

so that always at the heart
         of all that is beautiful
an essential simplicity
          and so too I ache
for the kiss of her lips
         for the warm press
of her breast on mine
         for her sweet compliance
as I enter the openness
         of her kindred flesh
again and again
         so softly

John Lyons

*Revised from earlier posting