The Natty Hat Competition– Results..

WOW!!!!!!, not enough WOW!!!! This was a fantastic response, I know I said that if you poetry spammed me, I’d love you forever, but I never expected that the majority of entrants would choose this option. Then there’s the range of poetry that was gifted to me, some from writers I knew and some were introductions to poets  I will have great joy in finding out a lot more about. To say I’m overwhelmed would be the grossest understatement, it’s no secret to those who follow The Parrish Lantern, that I have a fondness for the poetic arts, what I have discovered is how many others also love the art & even more important how many have a poem tucked close to their heart that has some emotional resonance, some personal meaning for them. So  thanks for sharing. And now over to my glamorous assistant…….

And The Winner Is ………….Kinna from Kinna Reads, Congratulations, I hope you love this book as I have the others from this series. A big hearty thanks to all who took part, you honestly amazed me with your contributions & if you’re curious of what happens to your favourite loved poems please click on the Pomesallsizes link below.

pomes ALL SIZES

Detail

I was watching a robin fly after a finch – the smaller bird

chirping with excitement, the bigger, its breast blazing, silent

in light-winged earnest chase – when, out of nowhere

over the chimneys and the shivering front gardens,

flashes a sparrowhawk headlong, a light brown burn

scorching the air from which it simply plucks

like a ripe fruit the stopped robin, whose two or three

cheeps of terminal surprise twinkle in the silence

closing over the empty street when the birds  have gone

about their own business, and I began to understand

how a poem can happen: you have your eye on a small

elusive detail, pursuing its music, when a terrible truth

strikes and your heart cries out, being carried off.

                                                           Eamon Grennan.

Tomorrow Pamplona Blog Tour 2011, Gig 11

As part of the Tomorrow Pamplona Blog Tour, all those involved were given  the chance to ask the author and translator of this wonderful book a question. Now, originally I posted the author Jan Van Mersbergen’s response as part of a Literary Bloghop organised by The Blue Bookcase, but on receiving Laura’s (the translator) answer,  I contacted the publishers with the idea of putting both  together, hoping to understand what influences affect either individual & how that reflects on their different roles. So to the question..

What Influences affect your Reading experience (Social,cultural etc.) Do these influences enhance or detract from the experience & specifically how do they feed into your own writing?

 

First over to Jan,

Difficult question. I just can see that for writing reading is the most important thing. You need to find out how other writers build up a novel, what they tell and more important, what they don't tell. What they hide. I guess reading is influenced by your background, because people who grew up with books and reading often like to read when the are a bit older. I think a book is the same book for everyone, but everyone can make their own story out of a book. I don't really think about that when I write. Writers who think about their readers produce books with very much explanations. I like it when a book is made while reading. I let readers find out about the story and the characters. Give the reader a clue but not to much. The connections between clues are made in the head of the reader. I think everyone can do that, as long as the language is down to earth. I'm from a family of workers and farmers, from the south of Holland. We don't talk like intellectuals. I can be seen as an intellectual cause I write novels, and writing is a hard job, but from my background I cannot write in any other language than the one of my family. I don't know, maybe that's why I like American novels from the countryside...
best,
Jan

the same question to Laura

translators immerse themselves in literature from the period or style of the
book that they're currently working on, hoping that the reading experience
will feed into the translation. Sometimes you just happen upon the perfect
solution that way. Judging from the critics' comments on Jan's writing, I
should have been focusing on Hemingway while I was translating his book!
However, although I've read some Hemingway, I wouldn't count him as one of
my personal influences.
When I'm working on a book, I focus on that book and on the voice of that
author. Jan has a very powerful voice as an author and I'm not sure that I
was aware of any other reading experiences informing my work as I translated
him - although there were probably plenty of unconscious influences going
on...
I definitely had a strong idea about the way I wanted the characters to
sound. Danny and Robert had to seem very real and believable, so I aimed to
stay true to Jan's text and not to tone down any of the aggression or
bluntness.

Thank you both Jan & Laura for your responses & all that’s left to complete this is to say how much I enjoyed this book & to recommend it wholeheartedly.

Literary Giveaway Blog Hop (T.N.H.C)-June 25-29

THE NATTY HAT COMPETITION.

The Literary Giveaway Blog Hop is an amazing event taking place from Saturday June 25th and running until Wednesday June 29th (Inclusive), and it is being hosted by Judith (Leeswammes' Blog). The idea is that  “If you’ve been wanting to give away a book to your readers, maybe to show your appreciation or because you have a special celebration, this is your chance to join up with others”. Now I’ve been blogging for just over a year now and during that time I have entered 10,0000000000000000000000000000000000 giveaways, hmm that might be a slight exaggeration, but a lot and I’ve even won a few. So of late I have been feeling a little guilty, feeling that I should be contributing not just take, take, take. So here goes, now,  if you just lightly peruse this site, you may notice my love of poetry and, in that spirit, anyone who leaves a favourite poem - just the name & writer (although if you want to poetry spam me with a complete poem, I will love you forever) - will be entered into a natty hat, juggled in a convincing manner & one will be picked by my able & glamorous (so she tells me) assistant (My 10 year old daughter). So to kick this giveaway off, I will post a poem by one of my favourite poets……..

Green Man.

Four small nouns I put to pasture,

Lambs of cloud on a green paper.

My love leans like a beadle at her book,

Her smile washes the seven cities.

.

I am the spring’s greenest publicity,

And my poem is all wrist and elbow

O I am not daedal and need wings,

My oracle kisses a black wand.

.

One great verb I dip in ink

For the tortoise who carries the earth:

A grammar of fate like the map of china,                                                                

Or as wrinkles sit in the palm of a girl.

.

I enter my poem like a son’s house.                                                       

The ancient thought is: nothing will change,

But the nouns are back in the bottle,

I ache and she is warm, was warm, is warm.

                                              Lawrence Durrell.

So now it’s over to you, just introduce me to your favourite Poem & its writer, to gain your place in the Natty Hat (pictured above).

  

Just because this is one of my current favourites   

                           

     Amour

 SHE SAID I was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Not true.

I was a lamb, in armour.

                        Brian Patten.

 

 

 

1. And the give away is “Being Human” published by Bloodaxe Poetry  this is the latest in what has been a fantastic collection of Anthologies, that started with “Staying Alive” and was followed up by “Being Alive”

The range of poetry here complements that of the first two anthologies: hundreds of thoughtful and passionate poems about living in the modern world; poems that touch the heart, stir the mind and fire the spirit; poems about being human, about love and loss, fear and longing, hurt and wonder. There are more great poems from the 20th century as well as many recent poems of rare imaginative power from the first decade of the 21st century. But this book is also rare in reflecting the concerns of readers from all walks of life. Such has been the appeal of Staying Alive and Being Alive that many people have written not only to express their appreciation of these books, but also to share poems which have been important in their own lives. Being Human draws on this highly unusual publisher's mailbag.

Here are a few opinions on the two previous anthologies

‘These poems distil the human heart as nothing else… Staying Alive celebrates the point of poetry. It’s invigorating and makes me proud of being human’ – Jane Campion

‘Truly startling and powerful poems’ – Mia Farrow

‘Staying Alive is a magnificent anthology. The last time I was so excited, engaged and enthralled by a collection of poems was when I first encountered The Rattle Bag. I can’t think of any other anthology that casts its net so widely, or one that has introduced me to so many vivid and memorable poems’ –Philip Pullman

‘Usually if you say a book is “inspirational” that means it’s New Agey and soft at the centre. This astonishingly rich anthology, by contrast, shows that what is edgy, authentic and provocative can also awaken the spirit and make its readers quick with consciousness. In these pages I discovered many new writers, and I’ve decided I’m now in love with our troublesome epoch if it can produce poems of such genius’ – Edmund White

‘A vibrant, brilliantly diverse anthology of poems to delight the mind, heart and soul. A book for people who know they love poetry, and for people who think they don’t’ – Helen Dunmore

‘This is a book to make you fall in love with poetry…Go out and buy it for everyone you love’ – Christina Patterson, Independent

‘Anyone who has the faintest glimmer of interest in modern poetry must buy it. If I were master of the universe or held the lottery’s purse strings, there would be a copy of it in every school, public library and hotel bedroom in the land. On page after page I found myself laughing, crying, wondering, rejoicing, reliving, wishing, envying. It is a book full of hope and high art which restores your faith in poetry’ –Alan Taylor, Sunday Herald

‘The book is without equal as a handbook for students and readers’ – Sian Hughes, Times Educational Supplement

‘I don’t often read poetry, so Staying Alive was a revelation’ –Ian Rankin, Sunday Telegraph(Books of the Year)

‘A book that travels everywhere with me… It is full of beautiful writing that can blow your mind’ –Beth Orton, The Times.

‘I love Staying Alive and keep going back to it. Being Alive is just as vivid… But this new book feels even more alive – I think it has a heartbeat’ – Meryl Streep

pomes ALL SIZES

Some Sources of Inspiration.

@pomesallsizes

The Poetry society(UK)

The Poetry Archive

See & Hear(Griffin Poetry Prize Site)

Poets. Org( From the Academy of American Poets)

Day Poems

Famous poets & Poems

Poem Hunter

Poetry.Com

Poetry Society (USA)

Poet Seers

Poetry foundation

  A Link To My  Fellow   Bookfiends & Bloggers. 

This Is A Novel About Pinball???

Pinball, 1973 by Haruki Murakami.

This arrived from the USA as an inter-library loan (Trinity college library,Hartford,Connecticut), it’s the Kodansha English Library edition and is a 179 pages + translation notes, the translator  is Alfred Birnbaum. The first thing I noticed is how small this book is, look at the picture and you’ll see the book is only just greater in length than the pen, this is a teeny book, perfect for your pocket.

Sometimes you listen to a piece of music and no matter how many times you listen to it, you just can’t get a hook on it. It’s as if the piece playing doesn’t exist, or exists but is not quite here, ghostlike, you feel the ambience, the drop in temperature, there’s a mood prevalent, but not much else. Pinball 1973 is such a piece. Like some of the ambient arrangements of Brian Eno, David Sylvian or one of the mellower tracks by electronics band Autechre, the book is more a mood than a complete tale.

The story itself,  follows an unnamed individual, who for the sake of simplicity I shall call  Boku* (I). Boku lives in Tokyo, working as a commercial translator, a business he set up with a partner. We also follow his friend the Rat, who spends the majority of his time in a bar run by a character known as J. It’s set around September – November 1973 and Boku is living with a pair of twins, who he finds so indistinguishable that they are named 208 & 209, numbers that they happened to have on their sweatshirts (which they swap), he seems to spend his time listlessly between work and home, with no apparent connection to the world about him, he even goes on a quest to track down a pinball machine that he was obsessed with a few years ago, in fact this is probably as excited as he gets, but it’s a mild excitement and when the quest is completed, he is at odds what to do next (doesn’t play the machine). At the end of the book the twins leave with no obvious reasoning why they were there, or why it was time to leave. Boku went home…..

“Everything was repeating itself, I retraced my steps by the exact same route, and sat in the apartment awash with autumn light listening to the copy of Rubber Soul  the twins had left me. I brewed coffee. And the whole day through I watched that Sunday pass by my window. A tranquil   November Sunday of rare clarity shining  through each and everything  ”  

At the same time the Rat, living back in the home town, pretty much living in J’s bar having dropped out of university, embarks on a pointless, unsatisfactory relationship with some unnamed woman, although embarks implies action he more or less stumbles into it whilst drifting, watching the sea and looking for a way out, whether it’s just the town or everything he’s never sure, just spending his time contemplating as opposed to actually doing.

Boku and the Rat never meet in this book, we follow both characters via alternating chapters, as the book  switches between first person descriptions of Boku’s life and the third person descriptions of the Rat’s. The overall tone of the book is sombre and pensive and little happens. It’s a book where the characters are stuck in some rut, that they are more than aware of, yet do not appear to have the energy or the inclination to climb out of. These are lives of quiet despair, where on the surface all’s going well, but if you just peel back the epidermis and you find individuals lost, with no connection to their surroundings and yet they’re intelligent, they realise there should be more to their lives, if only they could get a hook on it

“It’s like Tennessee Williams said. “The past and the present, we might say , “go like this.” The future is a maybe” Yet  when we look back on the darkness that obscures the path that bought us this far, we only come up with another indefinite “maybe” The only thing we perceive with any clarity is the present moment and even that passes by”

This book bridges between “Hear the Wind Sing”  which I’ve not yet read and “Wild Sheep chase”, which I adore, as it’s part of a trilogy I’ve read about face it’s hard to decide how this fits into the overall scheme, I'm hoping that will be clearer when the first in this series wings it’s way to me.

Haruki Murakami Resource
HM(Wiki)
*Boku – In Jay Rubin’s book “ Haruki Murakami and the music of words” He discusses the use of Boku (I) as the name for the unnamed protagonists stating that
“It is important that the word  Murakami uses for “I” throughout is boku . Although the “I-novel” is a long established fixture of serious Japanese fiction, the word most commonly used for the “I” narrator has a formal tone: watakushi or watashi. Murakami  chose instead the casual boku, another pronoun-like word for “I”, but an unpretentious one used primarily by young men in informal circumstances (women never use boku for “I”. In the few cases where Murakami creates a female narrator, they use the gender-neutral watashi. )”

The LitBlogHop(The Blue Bookcase)

The Blue Bookcase have once again thrown out a question with the aim of stimulating  conversation and debate amongst their fellow bookfiends. This idea of seeking out the opinion of their peers helps build and maintain a community of people that share a passion for literature in all it’s varied guises, for that I offer my hearty thanks. Now to the serious stuff. The Question ……

“What other outside influences affect your reading experience? Do you think these influences enhance or detract from the experience?”

This initially stumped me, the phrase “what other” had me reappraising previous questions in search for an answer, before coming to the conclusion that this could be answered as a continuation of a past question, that Megan was widening the debate on the influences that can affect your reading, or the decision on what you read. So in that light I read the question as….

What Influences affect your Reading experience (Social, cultural etc.), do these influences enhance or detract from the experience?

Now I think I've discussed before that my path through Literature was a series of stepping stones, that without a formal guide, my influences were the authors I read, this I described as the path of the autodidact, the self taught, or to be precise my teachers were the books I read and following that reasoning the authors, as one writer would introduce me to another in a trail that continues to this day. As to whether this has been an enhancement to my reading experience, well the answer has to be a resounding yes, or to put it more emphatically YES, without that influence I wouldn't be reading the range of writers I read today, in fact I wouldn't be writing this post for my Blog, which leads me to other outside influences, well again that’s an easy answer, the majority of the people that are now reading this, are my external influences, my love of world literature was a mere seedling, till I discovered Lit-Blogs, which gave me the knowledge & impetus to start my own, placing me in the position of asking this question to a writer, in fact the author behind my last post - Tomorrow Pamplona, written by Jan Van Mersbergen, How’s that for enhancing my experience, so the question I asked Jan, who was here as part of the………

Tomorrow Pamplona Blog Tour 2011, 1st Gig.

What Influences affect your Reading experience (Social,cultural etc) Do these influences enhance or detract from the experience & specifically how do they feed into your own writing?

Difficult question. I just can see that for writing reading is the most important thing. You need to find out how other writers build up a novel, what they tell and more important, what they don't tell. What they hide. I guess reading is influenced by your background, because people who grew up with books and reading often like to read when the are a bit older. I think a book is the same book for everyone, but everyone can make their own story out of a book. I don't really think about that when I write. Writers who think about their readers produce books with very much explanations. I like it when a book is made while reading. I let readers find out about the story and the characters. Give the reader a clue but not to much. The connections between clues are made in the head of the reader. I think everyone can do that, as long as the language is down to earth. I'm from a family of workers and farmers, from the south of Holland. We don't talk like intellectuals. I can be seen as an intellectual cause I write novels, and writing is a hard job, but from my background I cannot write in any other language than the one of my family. I don't know, maybe that's why I like American novels from the countryside...
best,
Jan

Tomorrow Pamplona–Jan Van Mersbergen

“A boxer is running through the city. He heads down a street with tall buildings on either side, darts between parked cars, runs diagonally across a junction, down a bike path, crosses a bridge and follows the curve of the tram tracks.”

And now the killer line, “Anyone passing would think he was in training” but he’s not, his breathing is fragmented, out of control. He is wide eyed, being chased by the echoes of  sentences shattered, haunted by words disconnected from their surrounding, all this accompanied by a bell incessantly ringing, ringing, sounds come at him distorted before clarifying to a simple command to  stop!  and with the only volition left to him he lashes out.

This is our introduction to Danny Clare, a professional  boxer, who up to this point in time appeared to be reasonably successful, going places, but now he’s running, running from a love affair that has left him  battered, running from some deed that will dog his every step. Into this tale comes Robert, who takes pity on this individual he sees soaked, standing at the side of the road. Robert is a family man on his annual pilgrimage to Pamplona, to take part in the encierro (Bull run) as a way of  escape from his 9-5 routine, the dull lethargy of his suburban existence. This book has been described as a road movie & it’s easy to see it as such, the prose, the tight, short sentences that pull you forward like the engine of some muscle car, as we follow this strange pair, Danny, brooding and curt with a suppressed rage so immense you can feel it burning off the page, and Robert, the friendly, talkative family man who feels the need to risk it all, to chance his life in the bull run. As the car takes them ever onwards towards Pamplona, we also follow the route backwards, becoming aware of the chain of events that led to Danny running, to a moment so explosive and powerful, a climax shocking, but with an inevitability that mirrors the bulls and their stampede.





Before I go any further I need to say that this was a book given to me as a review copy  by the nice  people at Peirene press (thanks Meike & Maddy) which they had offered up for review on a couple of social network sites. After I had snatched their hands off & got the book, I suddenly realised that this could be a problem for The Parrish Lantern, “What happens if I don’t Like/Love it” as it says on my disclaimer that if I don’t like something, it doesn’t get mentioned. But thankfully on opening this  book, the writing had me hooked, its spare, muscular sentences stripped of all unnecessary weight, had me front seat, smack bang in the middle of a road movie, following every twist & turn of the tale, a big grin on my face. Loving it.









At 189 pages this book packs in one hell of a tale, Madeline Clements from the Times Literary Supplement has described  Peirene’ s books as  "Two-hour books' to be devoured in a single sitting: literary cinema for those fatigued by film." Yet this would make a fantastic film, that tense air of claustrophobia, the dialogue between the two characters, the backdrop of the bull run would all add up to a cracking movie. But I’d be worried that a wonderful book, would get that “Hollywood” treatment, ruining the subtlety behind it’s facade.




Some Reviews

“Sometimes they say a lot, these silent, strong men… Van Mersbergen uses short fragments to

narrate Danny and Ragna’s unhappy love affair… But love is not van Mersbergen’ s main interest,

he’s more concerned with how men can still manage to tell everything while remaining silent.” –

de Volkskrant

“In Tomorrow Pamplona Jan van Mersbergen shows what he is capable of. He beautifully

combines two story-lines… It is idiotic to say that you’ve discovered a writer with his fourth book,

but I can only be honest: Jan van Mersbergen was a discovery for me.” – Lidewijde Paris, Vrij

Nederland

“Breath taking literature, urgent in its construction, silent over motives and longings, unrelentingly

oral about things over which there is nothing left to say.” – Leeuwarder Courant

“Tomorrow Pamplona lives up to its promises, an exciting, road movie of a story… Van Mersbergen

writes in a penetratingly poetic, forceful sort of prose, without falling into Rocky-esque romance or

weak Hemingway imitation. Clever.” – VPRO Gids

 

“The sensual and yet tight style makes Tomorrow Pamplona an intense reading experience. You

can feel something smouldering underneath those ordinary words, those short sentences: the

human incapacity of dealing with life, the choice between Robert’s running away and Danny’s

fights.” – De Morge



The key to the book is the secret of Danny's flight (and silence), but that's something you'll have to find out for yourself - and I highly recommend that you do.  -Tony's Reading List

Jan Van Mersbergen


Laura Watkinson(translator)

Peirene Press


Location : Burgess Close, Minster, Kent CT12 4,
Post

Gjertrud Schnackenberg (winner 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize).

Love Letter

Dear love, though I am a hopeless correspondent,
I found your letter habits lacking too
Till I received your card from H.-lulu.
It made me more-than-slightly-less despondent
To see how you transformed your ocean swim
Among dumb bubble-blowers into meters
And daffy rhymes about exotic tweeters
Beyond your balcony at 2 a.m.
I went to bed when you went to Hawaii,
And shut my eyes so tightly I saw stars,
And clenched my sheets like wadded-up memoirs
And made some noise like wah-wah-wah, i.e.,
I find your absence grimly problematic.
The days stack up like empty cardboard boxes
In ever-higher towers of cardboard
Swaying in senseless-lost-time's spooky attic.
I'll give the -atic rhyme another try.
To misconstrue the point-of-view Socratic,
Life is a painful stammered-out emphatic
Pronunciation of the word Goodbye.
Or, as it came out on the telephone,
Sooner-the-better is the way I see it:
Just say, "I guess not"; I'll reply, "So be it."
Beloved, if you throw this dog a bone,
TO readopt the stray-dog metaphor,
I'll keep my vigil till the cows come home.
You'll hear me howling over there in Rome.
I have no explanations, furthermore--
But let me say I've had it up to here
With scrutinizing the inscrutable;
The whys and how-comes of immutable
Unhesitating passion are unclear--
I don't love you because you're good at rhymes,
And not because I think you're not-so-dumb,
I don't love you because you make me come
And come and come innumerable times,
And not for your romantic overcoats,
And not because our friends all say I should,
And not because we wouldn't or we would
Be or not be at one another's throats,
And not because your accent thrills my ear--
Last night you said not "sever" but "severe,"
But then "severe" describes the act "to sever"--
I love you for no reason whatsoever.
And that's the worst, as William S. the Bard
Wrote out in black-and-white while cold-and-hot:
Reasons can be removed, but love cannot.
The comic view insists: Don't take it hard,
But every day I'm pacing up and down
The hallway till I drive my neighbors mad,
And evenings come with what-cannot-be-had
As lights blink on around this boring town,
Whence I unplug the phone and draw the shade
And drink myself half-blind and fantasize
That we're between the sheets, your brilliant eyes
Open me and, bang, we have it make--
When in reality I sit alone
And, staring at my hands, I think "I think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink"
While hating everything I've always known
About how you and I are sunk as well.
Under the aspect of eternity
The world has already ended anyway.
And, without you, my life can go to hell
On roller skates, as far as I'm concerned.
Two things are clear: these quatrains should be burned,
And love is awful, but it leads us to
Our places in the human comedy,
Frescoes of which abound in Italy.
And though I won't be sitting next to you,
I'll take my seat with minimal complaints.
May you sit in the company of saints
And intellectuals and fabulous beauties,
And not forget this constant love of Trude's.

Gjertrud Schnackenberg

 

Gjertrud Schnackenberg was this years International Winner of The Griffin Poetry prize for the collection “Heavenly Questions”. The Griffin prize is the world’s largest prize for a first edition single collection of poetry written in or translated into English, it was founded in the year 2000 to serve and encourage excellence in poetry­ with the aim to spark the publics imagination and to raise awareness of the crucial role poetry plays in our cultural life, as Aristotle said

“Poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history.”

Gjertrud Schnackenberg (born August 27, 1953 Tacoma, Washington) is an American poet Schnackenberg graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1975. She lectured at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Washington University, and was Writer-in-Residence at Smith College and visiting fellow at St. Catherine's College, Oxford in 1997.

The Throne of Labdacus, one of Schnackenberg's six books of poetry, focuses on the myth of Oedipus and the stories of ancient Greece. In A Gilded Lapse of Time she devotes a section to the life, poetry, and death of Dante. Schnackenberg has received the Rome Prize in Creative Literature from the American Academy in Rome and the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin. She has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1987 she received a Guggenheim grant. She has been a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1996. In 1997, she was the Christensen Visiting Fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, and in 2000 she was a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities. She won an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1998, and in 2001 she won the LA Times Book Prize in Poetry for The Throne of Labdacus

The Griffin trust was founded by Chairman Scott Griffin, along with Trustees Margaret Atwood, Robert Hass, Michael Ondaatje, Robin Robertson and David Young. In 2004 Carolyn Forché was named a Trustee and joined the list of internationally-acclaimed writers who sit on the board of the Griffin Trust.

An excerpt from Heavenly Questions

From The Light-Gray Soil

My fingers touch
A penny, long forgotten in my coat,
Forgotten in the shock, December eighth,
Midnight emergency, a penny swept
Together with belongings from his coat
Into a sack of “Personal Effects,”
Then locked away, then given to the “Spouse.”
Nearly relinquished, nearly overlooked.
Surely the last he touched, now briefly mine.
A token of our parting, blindly kept.
Alloy of zinc, the copper thinly clad,
Still ringing from the blow, blow of the die
That struck the faceless planchet long ago.
Struck in the “Kingdom of the Final Cause.”
Blindly my fingers touch the edge. It thins.
Worn as if one side had disadhered.
Eroded, yet its force cannot be spent.
How many hands have worn away the image.
The frail, raised inscription of the motto
Nearly intangible within the rim.
One and the Many, Many and the One.
How could I turn and say, But this is him.

 

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

pomes ALL SIZES

@pomesallsizes

If you have a Poem/ Poet, you admire please introduce them to me.