Hart Crane

By Brooklyn Bridge

irlandesuk poetry ,

By Brooklyn Bridge

The diametric gaze of love
and of lovers’ unstinting eyes

so that vision becomes a bridge
Hart Crane carrying his perceptions

in his pocket : poetry is span and projection
It moves on bold heels knowing that

nothing is new under the sun and yet
no two skies are ever the same

a lighter shade of blue or grey or a paler dark
Science has its sesames    poetry too

but poetry has mutinous song that fires
on all cylinders     that breaks in waves

at the base of the towering chalk cliffs
Mountain laurels and Easters of speeding light

the span of consciousness within an earth
drained of its tears    Poetry demands an end

to the fraternal massacre    to the slaughter
of lilies and the perversity of human disdain

The sound-waves launched from her lips
buttressed across the crisp morning air

slipped through the coruscation of the outer ear
penetrated and curled around the spiral cavity

of the cochlea and cosily implanted themselves
in the depths of his mind and his heart

Poetry is pact    is the bread of angels
is love’s purest breath when it so wills to be

John Lyons

History

irlandesuk poetry , , ,

History

To say that we live
           in prehistoric times
is no joke :
           what is history
if not dead time
           a past buried
in a chromatic wilderness
           in which nothing
may be reversed
           nothing achieved ?

A burnt match floating
           in a greasy pool of rainwater
a hair on a pillow case
           now lost beyond extinction
a lost lover who may be held
           in the memory for only so long
before the breath fades
           before the shifting sands
envelop every recollection

Be minimum
           with your words
economic in your actions
           resolve to move forward
to emerge from the tunnel
           into the hurly-burly
of the present
           write a new text of the world
full of warmth and affection :
           the past is a scribble
of fret and fear and fate
           that cannot be absolved

Make your world personal
           exercise the courage
of your convictions
           and adulterate nothing
Hers was a beauty
           that time could not slay
an angel of reality
           on the edge of night
my Morning Star

Be minimum
           I will say no more

John Lyons