Category: Poetry
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The Rule of the Rough Beast
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The “Rough Beast” is a phrase from “The Second Coming” by YB Yeats. Written in 1919, it is a poem that becomes more topical with each passing day. The last three lines of the poem above are a deliberate reference to TS Eliot’s lines from “Four Quartets” – “Humankind/Cannot bear very much reality.” And…
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BALLAD OF REFUGE by David Punter
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I come in fear. The wheels, the stuttering engine, By road or wave; the endless killing payments. Bit by bit, my mind returns to rubble. You come in fear. The hunched back, failed bravado, They make me squirm. You have no place here, brother; Get back, for you remind me of my weakness. …
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HATRED : A SESTINA by Robert Friend
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Hatred is wanting to hurt and its fulfillment dancing on someone’s grave. Because the insult was grave, I must repay hatred with hatred, abandon all pleasure: the dancing, the flirting, the wallowing wantings of every day. How drab their fulfillment when compared with the pleasure to hurt. I plan to avenge the hurt…
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Despatches to my Gazan Son
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Justin C McIntosh has given his permission for his photograph above to be used for the cover of a long Turkish poem by Cahit Koytak, now published as a book with an English translation alongside. I am proud to have been one of the translators. The original Turkish poem is called Gazze Risalesi. In English…
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Shavings from The Rainbow
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What is God, after all ? If maggots in a dead dog be but God kissing carrion, what then is not God ? And when the war began it seemed that the poles of the universe were cracking and the whole must go tumbling into the bottomless pit. You feel an agony…
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The Angel Overhead
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In his grief, he asked the angel hanging overhead, his faceless confessor : Why, Lord, do sinners’ ways so grossly prosper ? How can you allow the Lie so fatly to preside ? And the angel answered : I invited you to my feast, my laden tables, my radiant halls, and for my reward,…
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Body Parts
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After death the eye fixes of course. It was just a part – now discontinued. Each pupil has stopped in its own disjointed way, having nothing to look at any more, no one to show. I looked at her, the mother of my children. She could not look back of course and instead just looked…