The brave man

And so to live
the warm antiquity of self
in a world grown cold
green eyes that look
to the forgiving sky

and in the night
fresh stars appear
– the wine is good
and love is always
a prospect

That brave man
looks and learns
and is not afraid
to relinquish the past

to distance himself
from all that is false
or faint-hearted

John Lyons

This revised poem is based on a reading of two poems by Wallace Stevens, ‘The Brave Man” and “A Fading of the Sun” from an early seminal collection, Ideas of Order (1936). The accompanying painting is an old camembert lid splattered with leftover colours so as not to waste.