To read Muriel Rukeyser’s poem dedicated to Kollwitz, click here.
All that is essential
Year: 2017
Another thought on Tancredi
Another thought on Tancredi
It’s burlesque
a light show
everything you want to see
before your very eyes
but hidden behind the flourish
of coloured fans
painting is about nudity
revelation
the laying bare
of physical perception
its beauty lies in its truth
how the light unravels
as the knots of the spectrum
are untied and the gown
of discretion slips
to the floor
painters pore
over their canvases
drooling fingertips delighting
in the rough textures
and smooth lines—
it turns them on :
beneath the pigments
the breasts buttocks thighs
and a desire to penetrate
to have knowledge
of the flesh and blood
Tancredi’s composition
is an enticing tease
that no retina can resist
John Lyons
For the picture. . . Or scroll down to 21 February. . . .
Less is more
Less is more
The mind
the years
the memories
stirred
out of dust
thought
at the speed
of light
as the synapse
snaps
electrifying
love
where
have I been
all my life
time shared
times shared
though we
cannot agree on
the coordinates
what of the moon
what of Venus
all my days
all my nights
John Lyons
Occasional
Occasional
You never know
when a poem might happen
it doesn’t take much
the sun may suddenly appear
through the dull grey of the day
and lift your spirits
above the parapet
ready to take the risk
of being shot down
it may be a text
from the woman you love
which reads simply
I LOVE YOU
out of the blue
just as you were going
about your daily
minding your own
and you think to yourself
someday I’m going
to get that girl
to put it in writing
it’s that simple
blood simple
John Lyons
Untitled Willem De Kooning
Untitled Willem de Kooning
Do you see what I see
notes for a landscape
a shore and a beach
and a river and a sky
a path to enlightenment
a horizon viewed
from a cliff top
waves perceptible
in the brushstrokes
mimicking the tensions
in the earth’s crust
and in all our relationships
abstract cartography
of the soul
it took a human body
to paint this
to select the colours
and to control the brush
it took human energy
to express this to execute this
rather than accept
the docility of a pacified
environment in which nature
sits tamely on a canvas
I came here scriptless
Willem and I searched high
and low for love
I am an accident of birth
whatever is concealed
in this composition
will be revealed in due course
at its heart is the illumination
of sunlight and a brightness
that never fades
the joy we associate
with the loving application
of human vitality
everywhere apparent
the long sinews
of genitive muscle
it could be a walk
on a Sunday afternoon
or a three-penny opera
in which we all appear
and notice a perfectly positioned
pinmark in each of the corners
no abstract could ever be
so inexhaustibly
calculated which is why
I am not a painter
John Lyons
Painting observed on 10 February 2017 during a visit to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. Click here for an appraisal of this work.
A quiet house
A quiet house
A quiet house
and from a window
barren black trees waiting to bud
no coral or turquoise sky
just the dull grey of lingering winter
Yesterday by the railway cutting
a pigeon tossing dead leaves aside
one by one with its beak
scavenging for food under the mulch
But beauty conserved in the mind
the thought of love
that is not a perfection
much more a process
a necessary moving towards another
in which kindness and understanding
are unlimited in the give and take
of adjustment or accommodation
fingers that run through printed silk
the blue midnight of a summer shared
Life is the fugitive
and we pursue it with a passion
: to hold her and know the intimacy
of her breast and to have seen her
in times of joy and ecstasy and in sorrow
each kiss a blessing each word
a consolation
Love is neither a posture nor a demand
it sets no agenda and comes at no price
as long as it is true and mindful
Her hands reach out to me mine to her
and in that grasp
in that physical understanding
our affections are enshrined
our hearts set on a course
against the destructive surge of time
and for ourselves we needs must make
a quiet paradise in the house of our heaven
John Lyons
Love in Venice
Love in Venice
One day we will remember
that unblemished time
when we strolled
along these canals
peered into the calm waters
drenched
with darkness and light
our shadows
our reflections
dissolving as we went
What lasts forever
if not your beauty
your ageless smile
bright flesh of starlight
golden threads of hair
beneath a dark
fur-trimmed hood
Hand in hand
the hours passed
the days and nights
in a simplicity of love
and the unrest
of love’s wild lips
John Lyons
Second ode
Second ode
In the dark drift of night
you are there beside me :
we have survived the many
moon-marked phases of our love
and many a sober truth
has been told
many a subtle confidence
exchanged
Not a single day
can be detained
much less a year
and we who have risen up
from the soil are bound
by its inexorable rule
and yet we lie together
adrift in the dark night
substantial in our affections
a love deeper than the silence
of winter roses and of a beauty
more enduring
John Lyons
Ode
Ode
I am old
or at least
older than I was :
wisdom and virtue
have eluded me
all my life
my talents
such as they are
have amounted
to naught
my body weak
my throat parched
how the memory
of her kind words
on her moist lips
and of her un-
seasoned love
hangs heavy
in my heart
John Lyons
Location
Location
Poetry as an act of location
an act of placement
the bleak port of Santos
built on coffee and corruption
or the harbour in Salou
a catch of sardines
shed unceremoniously
onto the jetty
leaping metallic muscle
gleaming in the sunlight
Call it emotional
cartography
operating within
the physical register
How delicate a table laid
for a supper shared
How delicate a thought
a kiss
a dream come true :
her beauty baited
with a string of words
no pain or panic
in our pleasure
defeated
the tired leopards of the moon
here was my soil seeded :
here did her petals flourish
opening out to imbibe
the sweet night-thickened dew
her courage swollen
to the purpose
of love’s common limb
Old men now clamber across
the worn marble steps
ache of ages
ache of years
a flicker in the failing light
and then gone
deaf to the soft birdsong
on the summer air
their swooping swagger caught
in a swirl of mutinous dust
John Lyons
