Arts Articles
I shall betray tomorrow
I shall betray tomorrow, not today. Tear out my nails today, I shall not betray. You do not know where my courage ends. I do. Five of you, hard hands with rings. And on your feet you’ve boots With nails.
An atheist’s creed
Wisdom (and folly) through waiting, fearlessly passive1; naked flame’s humility; self-transformation in apostrophic mode, HaShem2; divine non-entity jealous of all humanity; powerless Nazarene’s failure breeding courage; (spontaneous-creative fullness of being3); positive incapability; abiding holiness of place; the inclusion of time in timelessness, (and at the point of death);...
Games at dawn
Children are the throats of blackbirds easing laughter out of half-light. Dawn raises curtains and the play begins. Trains emerge from skirting-boards, dinosaurs bark circles on the rug, while an army racks the carpet with its tiny dead.
When Autumn comes
I have come to the time When I watch seasons change, Mainly from my window, Nature is framed like some Constable or Turner, Startling, I notice garden choices Some not mine, a year’s growth Will fade, Autumn is here, The full eye blasting colour of the reds Of the...
O may the wealthy consider the poor
He knew the price of things: Rye about five shillings Oatmeal twelve per hundred pound. Mutton from three pence to five Bacon seven to nine. House rent for a poor man to be paid weekly. To be paid weekly. Wood for the fire scarce and dear. Many beasts slain to...
Inside
Once the lock clangs open I dance alone, obscured by billiard table and bookshelf in the sunlight by the bars where an old, stiff cobweb glints like the wire looping high into bright sky outside. At the foot of the fence old litter clings.
Such a piece of love
On the first real day, right at the beginning, Love smashed into pieces (designed like that, God’s truth: made for it).
Roger Bannister crosses the line
How we cheered in childhood, back when we, in the world, were young; seeing that tall figure stride, steady as a metronome, to achieve the unachievable, and, reaching the end, give us the hopefulness to believe the unbelievable.
Faith songs
I I have faith, not in God, but in the infinite tenderness of your touch, in the fragility of this.
Recycling facility
What shall I do with this, the old lady asks, Offering a telephone. It still works. Not now, it doesn’t. He chucks it in a skip.