Beachscape

I haven't blogged for a while, but here is a new poem.

Beachscape

Surprising that I never knew before
the bright curve of this bay,
the way the washed sand crimps the light
and bathers lounge like graceless seals.

I must have visited this coast
a hundred times, yet never understood
how marram grass secures the dunes
with subterranean roots, and why

we only see the coiled casts of the lugworm,
never the lugworm. What the lobster does.
When tides turn with the moon.
If mermaids count the coins within their purse.

It’s odd how just one shower, one rainbow,
one brief focus, one slant of the sun,
one mood, one chemistry, one instant,
combine in random destiny like this

to give us more than ever we expected:
the revelation of a cream-tipped wave,
spent on the sand, the gull’s orgasmic cry,
greedy and wild, the sensuality

of sun on skin, of arms and legs in water,
impressionistic light
breaking the bonds of molecule and atom
yet bringing all together like the roots

of marram grass, the disappearing groynes
rotting with knowledge, the unknowing ocean,
the beach bums gazing vacantly to sea
aching for grace, dreaming epiphany.

One Day In Washington

One Day in Washington

I noticed at the ceremony, your corrupt ways had finally made you blind. Bob Dylan Idiot Wind

The White House doesn’t seem so white today,

more a rainy shade of gray,

and Lincoln looks more serious than usual

inside his classical Memorial,

and Washington’s great Monument stands proud

although its apex hides within a cloud,

and cops and bikers sweat, and kids play ball

along the walkways of the National Mall,

and everyone is here, the sage, the fool,

casting their hopes in the Reflecting Pool,

some jeer and some are silent, some applaud

Mine Eyes Have Seen The Glory Of The Lord,

some think there isn’t very much to fear

but fear itself, and distance is not near,

and everything can be replaced, they say,

until the next time it is blown away

by idiot winds, and others, fast and loose,

play games of chance with executioner’s noose

and pardoner’s hand, and deathly voodoo doll,

from New York City to the Capitol,

and all is still a grayer shade of white

and the hard rain falls long into the night.

Pilgrim

Pilgrim

All of us are pilgrims on this earth. I have even heard it said that the earth itself is a pilgrim in the heavens. Maxim Gorky

Your journey never ends -
each step the first step,
each step the last step.

You move, but stand still.
In stillness you move through the valleys.
You feel you can move mountains.

You walk all day to a familiar place,
a place of coming and going,
a place of crowds and crossing points,

a place of no signposts.
You wait among the crowds,
watching for signs and signals.

One face among many,
you are alone, but not lonely
among the unfamiliar faces.

You are rootless, but at home
among the sharks, the snakes
and the snake oil salesmen,

though you would rather be in the desert
living on locusts and honey,
turning stones into bread

and water into wine.
You are rooted in the earth
like a tree whose twigs

and branches are crooked paths,
webbing the heavens.
You are the wellspring,

the stream and the river,
the delta, the ocean,
the shimmering destination.

You are all of this
and yet you are nothing
but the weary pilgrim,

arriving, departing,
following blind-eyed
the desire path of sorrow,

the dream path of desire,
up the steep hill,
past rowan and thorn

and the fourteen stations.
Each step the first step.
Each step the last step.

The Dove Descending

This poem was inspired by a recent reading of Rilke's The Dove and Lowell's Pigeons.

The Dove Descending

The dove descending breaks the air / With flame of incandescent terror

TS Eliot Little Gidding, Four Quartets

Eliot said the end of our exploring
will be to arrive at where we started
and realise our home was not so boring
before we panicked, packed our bags and parted.

And Rilke said a dove must fly the world
in order to appreciate the dovecote.
In storm and roaring wind is peace revealed.
The raging torrent rocks, then calms, the love boat.

Danger and distance, certainly,
and fear, and fear of fear itself,
delay departure, often indefinitely,
leave us like bookends on a dusty shelf.

We know the multi-coloured rainbow beckons
from edge of town, but our fenced-in backyard
requires attention. Drab suburbia threatens
but comforts also. It is always hard

to quit the friendly space one knows and loves,
to doubt the ones inhabiting that space.
Yet constantly a restless heart outgrows,
outflies the limits of this time and place.

Yes, all of us are arrows in the dark
speeding from God-knows-where to God-knows-where,
unsure of making a true mark on earth,
falling unsteadily through endless air,

skimming the ocean till we disappear
into the fire of the sinking sun,
all fight extinguished, as the Temeraire,
all flight unfeathered, Icarus undone.

In pieces, we reform to our true shape.
In dust, we scatter like primeval seeds.
Divorced from cells of coelacanth and ape,
no more embodied by our thoughts and deeds,

alone – no myth or metaphor or art –
and open to the stars which are our home,
we still the beating of our weary heart,
finding at last the place that we’ve come from.

Van Gogh's Ear

Bernadette Murphy's recent book, Van Gogh's Ear: the True Story, inspired this poem.

Van Gogh's Ear

I am not here. Already I’ve moved out
from studio to street, from charcoal grey
into chrome orange and cochineal,
from yellow house to whorehouse. Gabrielle,
that poor maid, mops the floor
the painted ladies pockmark with scuffed heels.
I pity her bare arms, her rabid flesh
scarred by the cauterising iron,
and pull her by the wrist into the light,
the burning light of cobalt blue Provence.

I place a ragged parcel in her hands.
She shudders and says nothing, but receives
the gift with grace, clutching it to her breast
in reverence, and I am like a god —
I’m Jesus Christ, and gentle Gabrielle
is Mary Magdalene. I stagger through
the blinding streets of Arles and cross the Rhône,
rave in the cornfields just beyond the town.
Vermilion blood runs down my cheek like tears.
But I’m not here. I have already flown
by crow’s path over waving cypresses
and under whirling stars I lay me down.

Happy The Man

This morning I read Alexander Pope's poem Ode on Solitude, which gave me some short blessed relief from the current turmoil in the UK.

Ode on Solitude

Happy the man, whose wish and care 
   A few paternal acres bound, 
Content to breathe his native air, 
                            In his own ground. 

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, 
   Whose flocks supply him with attire, 
Whose trees in summer yield him shade, 
                            In winter fire. 

Blest, who can unconcernedly find 
   Hours, days, and years slide soft away, 
In health of body, peace of mind, 
                            Quiet by day, 

Sound sleep by night; study and ease, 
   Together mixed; sweet recreation; 
And innocence, which most does please, 
                            With meditation. 

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; 
   Thus unlamented let me die; 
Steal from the world, and not a stone 
                            Tell where I lie.

Gandhi, Rumi And The EU

I recently came across this quote from Mahatma Gandhi:

I do not want my home to be walled in on all sides and its windows blocked. I want cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.

A nice, succinct comment on cultures and countries, I thought: how we need a balance between self-determination and equable cooperation, how we should be rightly positive about our own culture but also welcome and celebrate others — all to our mutual benefit. Any lessons here for the EU debate, I wonder?

I also recalled this poem by Rumi:

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house. 

Every morning a new arrival,

A joy, a depression, a meanness, 

some momentary awareness comes 

as an unexpected visitor. 

Welcome and entertain them all! 

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, 

who violently sweep your house 

empty of its furniture, 

still, treat each guest honourably. 

He may be clearing you out 

for some new delight. 

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, 

meet them at the door laughing, 

and invite them in. 

Be grateful for whoever comes, 

because each has been sent 

as a guide from beyond.

RUMI (Translated by COLEMAN BARKS)

Phenomena

Who can say what is? Who is able to judge the true worth of things? RAINER MARIA RILKE

I look around the room and find
Things radiant with vague significance:

Three tulips in a cracked, Venetian vase,
Pale cups of light on stiff, green stems.

Two gold-edged mirrors hanging opposite
Each other, tricking interlopers
To fall endlessly, mise en abyme.

Two windows, luminous and liminal,
Connecting interior and outer worlds,
In this case room and garden.

Four wooden chairs in all their usefulness,
With all their history, associations,
Crafted and beautiful aesthetic.

A wooden table set for dinner,
Empty white plates as cool as milkstone,
White candles, gleaming cutlery,

Awaiting company, though all is still
And quiet as an abandoned ship
And sudden voices unimaginable.

My funny, sort-of conversation
Is silent and appropriate:
A quick nod to the captive flowers,

A glance into the otherworldly
Garden, a quick prayer
That I may also love the unloved things. 

I praise the room’s unique particulars,
A room where things are waiting to arrive
Yet shining with the things already placed,

Potent with meaning, yet all the many meanings
Seem barely tangible, just out of reach.

Experiencing Unique Particulars

Rilke is one of those writers and poets who is never far from my side. Strangely, I'd never read his prose work The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge until recently. It's not as remarkable as the wise and wonderful Letters to a Young Poet, but I was struck by the following two short passages:

Poems don't come to much when they are written too soon. One should wait and gather the feelings and flavours of a whole life, and a long life if possible, and then, just at the end, one might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For poems are not, as people suppose, emotions — those come easily and quickly enough. They are experiences . . .

. . . No, no, nothing in the world can one imagine beforehand, not the least thing. Everything is made up of so many unique particulars that cannot be foreseen. In imagination one passes them over and does not notice that they are lacking, hasty as one is. But the realities are slow and indescribably detailed.

Rilke writes about all the important things — the poignancy of transitoriness, the necessity of solitude, the praising of creation in all its diversity, the recognition of love in all its complexity, the radiance of life which sparkles in spite of and, indeed, because of the ever-present nature of death; his poems, and many of his letters and prose pieces, may be considered deep meditations on existence. His artistic territory straddles the borderline between the expressible and the inexpressible.

There's a very fine book on my shelf called A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke, beautifully translated and edited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows. The entry for 29 April, from a letter written to Witold Hulewicz on 13 November 1925, reads:

Impermanence plunges us into the depth of all Being. And so all forms of the present are not to be taken and bound in time, but held in a larger context of meaning in which we participate. I don't mean this in a Christian sense (from which I ever more passionately distance myself) but in a sheer earthly, deep earthly, sacred earthly consciousness: that what we see here and now is to bring us into a wider — indeed, the very widest — dimension. Not in an afterlife whose shadow darkens the earth, but in a whole that is the whole.

Finally, here's a poem taken from The Book of Hours:

How surely gravity's law,

strong as an ocean current,

takes hold of the smallest thing

and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing —

each stone, blossom, child —

is held in place.

Only we, in our arrogance,

push out beyond what we each belong to

for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered

to earth's intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves

in knots of our own making

and struggle, lonely and confused.

So like children, we begin again

to learn from the things,

because they are in God's heart;

they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that

before he can fly.

Afflictions

There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.
But now afflictions bow me down to earth:
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;
But oh! each visitation
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
My shaping spirit of Imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man—
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.

Stanza VI from Dejection: An Ode by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 

A Gap In A Hedge

To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime's experience . . .  a gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields — these are as much as a man can fully experience. PATRICK KAVANAGH The Parish and the Universe

Inniskeen Road: July Evening

The bicycles go by in twos and threes —

There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn to-night,

And there's the half-talk code of mysteries

And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.

Half-past eight and there is not a spot

Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown

That might turn out a man or woman, not

A footfall tapping secrecies of stone.

I have what every poet hates in spite

Of all the solemn talk of contemplation.

Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight

Of being king and government and nation.

A road, a mile of kingdom, I am king

Of banks and stones and every blooming thing. 

PATRICK KAVANAGH

Words Speak Us

Octavio Paz is for me one of the great Hispanic poets — indeed, one of the great world poets. Luckily he has been blessed with some talented translators, many of whom are fine poets in their own right: Elizabeth Bishop, Muriel Rukeyser, William Carlos Williams, Denise Levertov, Mark Strand, Eliot Weinberger. Reading and much enjoying A Tree Within recently — which contains more than fifty poems written by Paz between 1976 and 1987— I was struck by some common themes and techniques running through the work.

Romanticism, Surrealism, contemporary painting — all have left their very clear mark on Paz. In this collection he draws word pictures of paintings by Duchamp, Tàpies, Balthus, Matta, Rauschenberg —and Miró:

Blue was immobilised between red and black.
The wind came and went over the page of the plains,
lighting small fires, wallowing in the ashes,
went off with its face sooty, shouting in the corners, 
the wind came and went, opening, closing windows and doors,
came and went through the twilit corridors of the skull . . .

From A Fable of Joan Miró

Buddhism and Japanese poetry are big influences:

The whole world fits in-
to seventeen syllables,
and you in this hut.

Straw thatch and tree trunks:
they come in through the crannies:
Buddhas and insects.

Made out of thin air,
between the pines and the rocks
the poem sprouts up.

From Basho An

He is also massively interested in the relation and interplay between the world of language and the world of things both concrete (nature, the city, the body) and amorphous (feelings, the spirit):

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

From Between Going and Staying

One of his methods is the use of figures of speech, such as oxymoron, and literary effects, such as synaesthesia, in order to define but at the same time deliberately confound the separateness of word and thing, action and non-action or, as in this case, the bodies of both poet and sleeping lover:

But at my side, you are breathing;
buried deep, and remote,
you flow without moving.
Unreachable as I think of you,
touching you with my eyes,
watching you with my hands.

From Before the Beginning

Paz wants to shake up any preconceived ideas about language, time, distance, knowledge, love etc. and shock us into considering them afresh:

Love begins in the body
— where does it end?
                                     If it is a ghost,
it is made flesh in a body;
                                            if it is a body,
it vanishes at a touch.

From Letter of Testimony

Koan-like questions are inherent in his poems — for example: do we invent the world or does the world invent us? What is the nature of time? What is appearance and what is reality, and are the two interwoven?

     
                  Poetry
speaks and listens:
                                it is real,
And as soon as I say
                                   it is real,
it vanishes.
                   Is it then more real?

From Between What I See and What I Say . . .

There is a constant mixing of interior and exterior worlds, dreams and actualities:

The day is short,
                             the hour long.
I walk through lots and corridors and echoes,
my hands touch you and you suddenly vanish,
I look in your eyes and suddenly vanish,
the hour traces, erases, invents its reflections
— but I don't find you,
                                       and I don't see me.

From A Song out of Tune

. . . and an opposing of transience and timelessness, illusion and reality, life and death — which ultimately may not be opposition, but reconciliation and unity:

                                       The art of love
— is it the art of dying?
                                        To love
is to die and live again and die again:
it is liveliness.
                        I love you
because I am mortal
and you are.

From Letter of Testimony

Paz is also fond of celebrating the world in all its beauty and multiplicity with Whitman-style litanies:  

. . . the fruits and the sweets, gilded mountains of mandarins and sloes, the golden bananas, blood-colored prickly pears, ocher hills of walnuts and peanuts, volcanoes of sugar, towers of amaranth seed cakes, transparent pyramids of biznagas, nougats, the tiny orography of earthly sweetness, the fortress of sugarcane, the white jicamas huddled together in tunics the color of earth, the limes and the lemons: the sudden freshness of the laughter of women bathing in a green river . . .

From 1930: Scenic Views

Certain valued words crop up time and again in Paz like signals or beads on a rosary: mirror, flame, river, landscape, body, brain, knot, glance, word, syllable . . . These are symbols yet not symbols — another blended contradiction which is quite typical.

I leave you with some more lines from Letter of Testimony, one of the most remarkable poems in A Tree Within. Note the painterly eye and the preoccupation with language:

In love with geometry
a hawk draws a circle.
The soft copper of the mountains
trembles on the horizon.
The white cubes of a village
in the dizzying cliffs.
A column of smoke rises from the plain
and slowly scatters, air into air,
like the song of the muezzin
that drills through the silence, 
ascends and flowers
in another silence . . .

Let yourself be carried by these words
toward yourself . . .

Words are uncertain
and speak uncertain things.
But speaking this or that,
                                            they speak us.

All translations by ELIOT WEINBERGER

Inventing Anew The Reality Of This World

Lately I've been reading a lot of Octavio Paz.

Las puertas del año se abren,
como las del lenguaje,
hacia lo desconocido.
Anoche me dijiste:
                               mañana
habrá que trazar unos signos,
dibujar un paisaje, tejer una trama
sobre la doble página
del papel y del día.
Mañana habrá que inventar,
de nuevo,
la realidad de este mundo.

The doors of the year open,
like the doors of language,
onto the unknown.
Last night you said:
                                 tomorrow
we must draw signs,
sketch a landscape, hatch a plot
on the unfolded page
of paper and the day.
Tomorrow we must invent,
anew,
the reality of this world.

OCTAVIO PAZ The opening of Primero de Enero (January First)

Tal vez amar es aprender
a caminar por este mundo.
Aprender a quedarnos quietos
como el tilo y la encina de la fábula.
Aprender a mirar.
Tu mirada es sembradora.
Plantó un árbol.
                          Yo hablo
porque tú meces los follajes.

Perhaps to love is to learn
to walk through this world.
To learn to be silent
like the oak and the linden of the fable.
To learn to see.
Your glance scatters seeds.
It planted a tree.
                           I talk
because you shake its leaves.

OCTAVIO PAZ The close of Carta de Creencia (Letter of Testimony)

Translated by ELIOT WEINBERGER

Generation Game

This poem is written from the perspective of someone trapped in the wrong generation. Although such people may occasionally become sages or prophets, they are far more likely to be considered mere freaks or geeks.

Generation Game

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness
Allen Ginsberg Howl

Talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation
The Who My Generation

Homeward bound, I wish I was homeward bound
Simon and Garfunkel Homeward Bound

I saw the best minds of my generation
Vanish from dreaming spires and reappear
On I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.

I saw the best minds of my generation
Abandon academe and join a party
With pop stars, porn stars and the glitterati.

I saw the best minds of my generation
Dumb down the literary canon 
And worship Rihanna not Rhiannon.

I saw the best minds of my generation
Trade soundbite for soundbite, tweet for tweet,
Choose spam over redder meat.

I saw the best minds of my generation
Consider greed their goal and duty,
Give up on the search for truth and beauty.

I saw the best minds of my generation
Toss ancient wisdom down the drain,
Believing history just a pain.

I saw the best minds of my generation
Stay on the bank, not cross the gulf,
Whimper not howl like a timber wolf.

I saw the best minds of my generation
Stuck in the wasteland of despair
Wearing only designer underwear.

I saw the best minds of my generation
Mess up the genes of the human race
Then lose themselves in cyberspace.

I saw the best minds of my generation
Moan at the world’s abject condition
While climbing the ladder of ambition.

I saw the best minds of my generation
Humming a tune from The Magic Flute
While sharing a bed with a prostitute.

I saw the best minds of my generation
Chant with no trace of irony:
Fuck him, fuck her, fuck you, fuck me.

And as I waited vainly at the station
For a train to take me to my destination
I saw myself grow old and left behind —

Out of reach, out of turn and out of time, 
Out of synch, out of step and out of mind,
Out of phase, out of phrase and out of wine,
Out of breath, out of luck and out of line — 

Out of touch with my g-g-g-generation
Out of touch with my g-g-g-generation

The Generation Game is a British game show produced by the BBC in which four teams of two people from the same family, but different generations, competed to win prizes.

At the end of the show, one member (or in later series both members) of the victorious team watched prizes pass on a conveyor belt, and then won as many as could be recalled in a set time. A trademark of the show was that a cuddly toy was always among the prizes. This led to an affectionate joke: ‘Dinner service . . . fondue set . . . Cuddly toy! Cuddly toy!’, which is often quoted whenever the show is mentioned. The audience would shout out the names of the prizes, allowing the contestants to carry away large numbers of items.

WIKIPEDIA

One Morning I Woke Up With Nothing

One morning I woke up with nothing
But a half-empty bottle and a half-written poem.
I finished the bottle but not the poem.

Then I slipped the poem inside the bottle
Which I floated on the ocean of my mind.
The waves were deep but kind.

It fetched up on the shore of my real self,
My self of truths and dreams
Which had no need of things 

Luckily, for they had been given away
Or sold or stolen — what more I can say.
All that remained was my true self,

My sea-green mind and my bottled message
In all its poverty and obscurity,
Yet somehow innocent in its purity.

Poem For The Autumn Equinox 2015

I was struck by Roselle Angwin's latest poem, Birthday. Thanks, Roselle, for letting me reproduce it here.

Birthday

At dawn the air is dense with contrails almost not-there,
yet meadow, hedge and sky are all a-glitter: the time of year 
when small migrating spiders launch their bodies into space
on less than a breath, and mesh the light. They can’t know 
where they’re landing or even if they’ll arrive; but autumn’s
glow is richer and the day brighter for their risk. Microscopic,
their trust in life is one that we can’t have, with our 
knowingness, the way we lumber through our years;
and oh what I’d give to rest this body on space and sky
like that, not caring where I’m going, if my fragile tensile arc
will lasso the future, if I’ll ever get there, or who comes with me.

She Is The Fever

The only other poem I wrote on the Via Francigena was this one . . .

She Is the Fever

She is the fever I can't shake off
The temperature that can't be lowered
The illness for which there is no cure

So this is what I've come to think:
A little suffering is a good thing
And endless torment even better

Lombardy

I've been walking on the Via Francigena through northern Italy . . .

Lombardy

She lies down among the rice fields.
Little frogs jump on to her watery roots.
She smells sweetly of summer's decay.

At night she rests in the poplars.
Her skirt of leaves shivers in the wind,
Catching the moon's fragmented light.

She disappears through cracks in the parched canal,
Then reappears, rustling through the maize.
But you cannot see her and you never will.

She eats and drinks with the peasants,
Her red lips sucking the spaghetti,
Her slim throat gulping the wine.

In the piazze she talks with the talkers
But remains silent with the silent.
Her business is nobody's and everybody's.

In the churches she prowls everywhere,
Sullen as a mastiff,
A black goddess on the wrong side of God.

She is the breeze on the pilgrim's face
And the sharp stones beneath his feet.
She bruises and soothes, kisses and bites.

She is the heart of the risotto,
The loaf of bread, one slice for each.
She is the peach, the plum, the fig.

She hangs heavy over the campagna
Like a hot blanket 
Pressing and comforting my brow.

Why can't I do without her?
Because she's part of me now
Like sunshine and rain and caffè macchiato.

She fishes with the solitary heron,
Also mixing with the sociable ibis and egret.
She is faster than the hawk, more cunning than the fox.

She might be in the cascina or the cantina
Or in the vineyards on the hill of Pavia
Or on the banks of the Ticino or the mighty Po,

And if she's not here, she's there,
And if she's not there, she's gone,
Gone into the blue bowl of the sky

Or somewhere on that limitless flat plain
Of rice and beans and ruined farms
And lines of poplars anchoring the horizon.

Light Breaks

I am delighted to announce that my second poetry book, Light Breaks, has just been published. It's available from Amazon UK, Amazon US and Amazon Europe.

Some reviews of my former collection, Raining Quinces:

Robert Wilkinson writes like the practised pilgrim he is in this warm and entertaining collection. Sometimes he makes us laugh, sometimes he jolts with a surprising image. An underlying sense of spiritual longing infuses the diverse collection. A delightful companion for the road. 

ROY BAYFIELD Amazon

Many things are incorporated into the poetry of this substantial book — spiritual insight, comic wordplay, personal confession . . . There is a Romantic simplicity about much of Robert‘s poetry. At points I'm reminded of Rilke and, in the lighter pieces, Wendy Cope and John Betjeman. This is poetry which lays its tune frankly on the air (as Basil Bunting put it). And he can be very funny. For a start, anyone who has not yet read his celebration of Nigella Lawson should buy this book. Of the more serious poems, I particularly liked Orpheus and Eurydice and Two Worlds in One — it was worth the price of the book for these two poems alone, I thought. 

DOMINIC RIVRON Amazon

A poem from Light Breaks:

Tomorrow

Tomorrow I am going to give up
Scotch whisky and the pursuit of knowledge,
sex, sour wine, peanut butter,
all beliefs, religions and philosophies,
arguments, Gardeners’ Question Time,
overindulging in oranges,

and I’ll throw off
my torn blue Levi’s and my poet’s hat,
do something so mad and different that
I’ll leave my old ideas and habits
in my wake like yesterday’s clothes,
and whoop, and hardly know myself.

ROBERT WILKINSON                        

I Will Loosen My Hair

I liked this so much when I read it in Resurgence & Ecologist magazine just now, I thought I would share it.

Since water still flows,
though we cut it with swords,
and sorrow returns,
though we drown it with wine;
since the world can in no way
answer to our craving,
I will loosen my hair tomorrow
and take to a fishing boat.

LI PO