ARCHIVE - 2

WHY A POEM ?


It's the life of the spirit insisting on living

The insistent future his promptings is giving

The past his puzzling clues is scattering

The rowdy selves inside are chattering

The Poem forward is forever moving

Another and another and another becoming

Shivering shattering spluttering and splitting

Taking the chaos and making it fitting






A POSTCARD FOR SIDI


Sellotape yellows

Pritt stick wrinkles

There is no good way to stick things to things



Pencil fades

Ink smears

You can't record things beyond the possibility of loss



Guitar strings rust

Sounding boards crack

We live in uncertainty - certainty is fleeting



Paper gets torn

Wires get crossed

There are I think only occasional gaps in the fog






RECKONING WITH YOU


I said it was over

I thought we were through

But when I said it was over

I reckoned without you



Because whether it's over

Is not wholly up to me

What's next ?

Wait and see



I tried to escape

Oh yes, I tried

But you my dear

Would not be denied



Most moves in the Game

Are unforeseen

Whatever we predict

However we preen







SONNET: ART'S HISTORY


Art's history has long had two different strains -

Superstar Titians, obscure mad Van Goghs.

It's we who revere or forget their remains;

Fame to our judgements its laurels doffs.

Some drowned in praise, some laboured unknown

Since the Renaissance set up its Genius-Kings;

But Time, that cool critic, has always shown

Exactly who lacked and who had true wings.

We can't know now - some great are rubbish -

Some great are great - success is no bar -

Some rubbish are great - most rubbish are rubbish -

So strum, paint, write because that's what you are !


Self-question closely whatever you make -

Are you Southey, Coleridge, Byron or Blake ?







BOTH BORED WITH LONG EXPLANATIONS



Both bored with long explanations

And complicated scenes,

We for once won't flounder

In What It All Means



Certain of our pleasure

Uncertain of our aim:

No two configurations

Are ever quite the same.







ALONE AT LAST



Mad and roaring in the Dictean Cave

I am - as I want to be - alone

Far beyond any others' constraints

In an idea free-fire zone



Following my own track just as I please

Its twists, potholes, bumps -

Perhaps at last I finally have

Climbed out from the dumps



Following my own track just as I please

The greatest crime of all -

I run the other way gleefully

When I hear my good friends call !







STRAIGHT FROM THE MYSTERIOUS PLACE



In this dirty, dusty flat

Lives a most retired Matt -

A modern Prospero

That wilful, winding ways does go

'Midst shelves and shelves and piles of books

And never out the window looks -

But by the light of an uncertain spark

Mines for fragments in the dark !







LE PENDU


No one can reach me

Behind my barricade;

No hand or demand

Reach through what I have made;



Cold as January -

Mean as a passer-by;

Hanging between

What and why.