by phillipw | Jan 12, 2020 | Uncategorized
Rimbaud & Swinburne One wonders if the fog outside had made Its way inside the reading room where two Bent poets sat, one who’d employed a blade Of poesie across Paul’s paps; one who Composed rhymed couplets focusing upon The teeth of Sappho...
by phillipw | Jan 12, 2020 | SI
The Age of Valentino and Chaplin ………. With all the clarity of silver’s sheen Yet maybe with a patina of gray, The soundless light fills up the sterling screen. The characters and scenes are like ballet But of a stiff and jerky sort. Perhaps This...
by phillipw | Jan 12, 2020 | CR
Windsor Four pheasants run across a pale green field. It’s not the hunting season so they’re sound. Their jewelled, velvet breasts will not yet yield To royal guns. True beauty should confound The barrels and the triggers, but red death Blasts...
by phillipw | Jan 12, 2020 | NO
Northeastern Regions In parts of Europe where no lights had burned In people’s minds, dark ages (when they came) Brought nothing new. No Ovid there had churned Out verses made of sun and sex. His flame Of silliness and peccadilos had No sway in huts...
by phillipw | Jan 12, 2020 | UN
The Hercynian Forest When Roman emperors pressed conquest past The Rhine and to the forests of the east, Were these imperial stabs trying to cast Nets for trammeling a fabulous beast? Hercyninan primeval greenwoods were Reputed to embrace the unicorn In...
by phillipw | Jan 12, 2020 | PH
In Some Real Sense In some real sense our childhoods are replaced By photos. Here I sit with pale hair so Blond that it erases me. I’m traced In memory now because of flashbulb blow And not because synapses in my brain Remember me, that little, nearly...
by phillipw | Jan 12, 2020 | LO
Two Symbols Two symbols could not be much more unlike Each other, one of softness in an arc, The other of right angles, death and spike, The rainbow—sweetness—and the cross, like shark Its style The bending bow that Rimbaud thought Of on the ferry...
by phillipw | Jan 12, 2020 | SE
Who Knows Where We Are Going? Who knows where we are going when we set Off every day? We start out for the shops And meet the one we’ve always dreamed of, Brett Or Betty. Or we pass a winter copse While on a bus to Oxford, open wide Our book, . . . and find...
