by phillipw | Dec 4, 2019 | EN
A View among English Hills “about the woodlands I will go” ~ A. E. Housman He stands beneath a live oak tree. It wears Its leaves and bark. Sheep wear white wool. The wolds Are clothed in fields and trees. They all are stairs To heaven. Under them he firmly...
by phillipw | Dec 4, 2019 | FR, MA
Embracing Men’s friendship is love reduced to greed, true Covetousness dressed up as affection– Or so says Nietzsche. It is reduced to A South Seas cuisine of male confection, A sort of cannibalism in which The two sit down to swallow...
by phillipw | Dec 3, 2019 | FA
Antinoüs What must it be to be remembered for One thing, especially if that is as The friend of someone famous? What a bore To be of finest beauty (all that jazz) But end up just a slur in river mud, Antinoüs the god, yet only in The hollow heart of...
by phillipw | Dec 3, 2019 | BE
If Only If only . . . it were true that perfect face And fetching body contours equalled good, That silk-like lashes on the eye meant grace Of character—and lovely dimples could Be parallel with rectitude of soul, That lips demanding urgent kisses might...
by phillipw | Dec 3, 2019 | BI, FR
Sad Substitute Those eyes, that mouth reminded me of Glenn, My friend of forty years now gone. The hair, Though, wasn’t crinkly thick. This specimen Was balding on the top, the strands too spare And thin to be a substitute for my Young man of fourteen...
by phillipw | Dec 3, 2019 | IS
Coincidental Consequence “God’s veil over things makes them all riddles.” Herzog, 92 It turns out that the reason women wear Hijab in Islam is that Allah first Adopted it Himself to hide the flare Of His innate blaze that otherwise would burst The eyes of all His...
by phillipw | Dec 2, 2019 | AU
High, High Above High, high above the heavenly robes in crèpes Of purple swathes and borealis green, A meteor’s white streaks behind the drapes Hung blowing in the sky. Some say the scene Results from geomagnetism’s acts On molecules and atoms of N2 And...
by phillipw | Dec 2, 2019 | FR, MA, MO
“O mes amis, il n’y a nul ami” “My friends, there is no friend!” Diogenes Laertius has Aristotle cry, Despairing of the chance that theory’s Demand for one who’s more than ally, Gives more than scratch his back and he’ll scratch mine Delight, is more than merely pure,...
