The memories
I am bound
to dismantle
of times too good
to be true
of scallops
from Borough Market
in the fluted shells
that the pilgrims wore
Memories of walls
and rivers and boats
and cathedrals
and many a meal
so joyfully shared
At what fence
our love faltered
I’ll never know
like so much
I suppose
I’ll never know
John Lyons
Revised from earlier today
Poetry is word time
the running metre
swift of foot
along the streets
of Paris or Berlin
or Venice with its canals
The impertinence of history
the microbes’ biological clock
or doomed stars
as their batteries deplete
: what drives heaven
and hell and every nook
and cranny of creation
Drinking mulled wine
in the Christmas markets
as snow gently falls
through the universe
as it settles upon the living
and the remembered dead
throughout the vales
of northern Europe
and far beyond
Locked into the land
with our earth gaze
ears cocked to capture
a friendly voice
and it comes through
crackling with radio
interference
our bridled thoughts
to be mounted at will
eternity in the saddle
time holding the reins
And love a living thing
palpable flesh
squeezed with delight
as darkness falls
or at dawn
as the cattle egrets
begin their day
and the host herd
shuffles down to the river
to slake their thirst
all in good time
solid word time
cosmic rhyme time
John Lyons
Ostentation is one thing
beauty another
and underlying it all
there is or is not love
For a moment
put to one side
the glorious mosaics
the painted ceilings
and take to the streets
that flank the canals
wealth is personally perishable
insofar as it does not
survive one’s own
generation
it transcends nothing
it merely remains
acquiring the sad dust
of monumental history
where tourists tread
in their ungainly droves
Possession and power
are one thing
but it is love alone
that drives bodies
to meet and lips
to touch
John Lyons
I remember the cascade of light
refracted through the droplets of rain
I remember the amber gleam of your eyes
gazing at me from time to time
I remember the love that I saw there
and how our bodies flowed together
effortlessly as we crossed bridges
and strolled along the endless canals
I remember thinking how all things end
but how love if it is true transcends all things
I remember thinking that the beauty
of the Venetian mosaics was like the beauty of life
a narrative painstakingly assembled piece by piece
years in the making never to be undone
John Lyons
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.
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
Sumptuous sea city
haunts the mind
built out of nothing
translucent waters
turned to stone
turned to energy
essence of light
refracted through glass
through sand and water
light filtering light
web of untold hours solidified
bedded down
on the sea floor
arrested in luminous reliefs
etched into the air
space and time
displaced
wisdom of the owl
ferocity of the lion
beauty at any price
John Lyons
_-_Monumento_del_doge_Tommaso_Mocenigo_-_Pietro_Lamberti_e_Giovanni_di_Martino_da_Fiesole.jpg)
Behold upon the sarcophagus
the recumbent figure
of one Tommaso Mocenigo
so faithful and tender a portrait
wrought without painfulness
of the doge as he lay
in ducal robe and bonnet
deep in his death
how peaceful his head lies
aslant upon his pillow
hands simply crossed
as they fell
observe the emaciated face
the features large
in their natural chiselling
but so lordly pure
that even in his warm breath
they must have looked
as cold as marble stone
at once so deeply worn
by thought and now in death
upon his temples the veins
branched and upraised
the skin in sharp folds puckered
and the brow high-arched
and surprisingly unkempt
the unseeing eye-ball
so magnificently large
and curvature of the lips
lightly veiled
by the moustache at the side
and in a final flourish a short
sharp-pointed double-beard
how noble and how still he rests
stern angle of cheek and brow
so subtly softened beneath the pale light
of the cool and white sepulchral dust
John Lyons
johnjosephlyons 