New poem
San Shek Wan
My bedroom has no curtains
to cordon where I lie,
but morning drapes the windows
with green, and clouds, and sky.
New poem
Hungarian Dawn
The sun paints golden stripes across the green,
from the next valley sounds an early train,
Esther, ecstatic, reaches for the chimes,
my tablet plays the Cosi overture,
and Mozart cuts straight through the walls
between the solitary cells
where we are doomed to pass our days
and gently lays his fingers on my heart.
Poets should be fathers, Coleridge knew:
nothing captures that dawning freshness like
having to wake up, getting out of bed
and sharing those first morning moments with
someone who cannot yet speak,
who does not need to hear a word,
and just wants to be touched and held,
for you can hold a child and a pen.
The whole world moves to music, intervals
between men’s voices, shadows of the trees,
ideas and impressions, following
the natural progression of the scales;
a black cat wanders down the lane,
bay horses neigh and flick their tails,
a pheasant coughs, according to
the resonance, the music of the spheres.
Humanity’s dark inner caverns ring
from mighty grounds, and what we think or write
is just an echo of those normal modes,
the notes and stops of consonants and vowels
the pentatonic scale of breath,
and we communicate in time
in unison of each and all
the rhythm that makes two hearts beat as one.
And so I spend those precious first few hours
in writing poetry instead of work
– time out from get and spend – with much to do
and with a family needing to be fed;
the blue water in the pool
lays its perfect mosaic of tiles
of light, and with the closing notes,
where our path ends, a rose exalts the sun.
New poem
The Pine Nut
A pine nut in the palm of my hand
between head and heart lines, just short of fate,
centred within the plain of Mars;
it looked so gravid, lying there,
so self-contained, thrust and repose,
recursive oval, pale gravel from
the stone pine gardens of Italy;
an edible seed, asking to be palmed
and swallowed whole, to germinate … where?
New poem
Tong Fuk, March 2011
Hello, cawed a crow from the pandan tree,
against late afternoon’s lazy rays
falling flat across Tong Fuk beach;
you, kilted in your canary fleece,
with Esther, still a cocooned papoose
in the terracotta baby wrap;
Diana, wearing her salmon shorts,
holding her angel down to dip
its little wooden feet in the sea,
mirrored in the sand’s clear glass.
New poem
The Stylites
The pillar saints dot buttes throughout
the Meteora, each stylite
halfway to Heaven, beyond doubt
or sighting by theodolite;
strait faith founded on a rock
in mid-air, boosted to the light
above the clouds, flown with the flock
of St Thanos the Meteorite.
New poem
Esther’s first dance
Our daughter pulses in my arms,
my dance partner in a slow dance
to end over a decade later
with her head on someone else’s shoulder;
but while she’s still small, I support
her little head and infant weight
eye to eye at shoulder height
till she can stand on her two feet.
Second collection out! The Musical Box of Wonders
Yes, thanks to my illustrious publisher, Henrik Harksen, my second collection is out! Details here:
And this is what Alan Brownjohn said:
“Crammed with attractive detail handled with sensuousness . . . Poems that are in turns elegaicand entertaining, technically adept and resourceful, and treating a variety of themes Western and Easternwith grace and dignity. What more could one hope for in a collection?”
Head on over and buy, everybody!
[Top]The Musical Box of Wonders flyer
Musical Box of Wonders sales flyer
Here’s the sales flyer for The Musical Box of Wonders. Thanks, Henrik!
[Top]New poetry collection coming soon!
Yes, it’s all creativity here! My new collection, The Musical Box of Wonders, should be appearing from my publisher, Henrik Harksen Productions, soon. Here’s the link to the publisher’s blog – watch this space!
http://hharksenproductions.wordpress.com/2011/03/01/musical-box-of-wonders/
[Top]New poem
Delvaux Nocturne
Night falls, trams halt,
the points’ clatter sleeps;
the last lamp casts its amber arc
on tar, asphalt
and girls bowling hoops.
Subfusc street scenes,
dark stations sans trains,
fill with sonambulistic dreams:
cool nudes’ white lines
and bare skeletons.
Above flagged squares,
still marshalling yards
and stark arcades of plaster casts
spread wires, fine-drawn
against lilac clouds.
And here’s one of the pictures that partly inspired the poem (my daughter Diana provided the rest!)
