In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk
“The Conversion of Saul” by Michelangelo, Pauline Chapel fresco, Vatican City.
This “I” we each inherit, made spine
of the world, axis, pole,
look-out from the world’s helm
gazing on the universe,
gazing on you,
gazing on death…
“Mummy,” I said,
seven or eight years old,
“I have decided
that I am God.”
We were walking east
along Glebe Road
towards the… Continue reading West of Caritas
In the fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer introduced Rhyme Royal to English poetry and all these stanzas of mine about Brexit share that long established rhyme scheme. And Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales and one of those is “The Franklin’s Tale” which I love. And that’s where this medieval word… Continue reading The Parrot Speaks of Fre-dom
The lords of misrule continue to flood our minds and lives with their disgraceful doings. But I can speak here of two small developments which, for me at least, are cheering and act in a way as rafts.
One concerns a new website, designed by Joseph Wolf : https://poemsforthewall.org
Here is… Continue reading Rafts in the Flood
Let’s recall the film “High Noon,” that great Western. The outlaw and his hoodlum cronies are riding into town. They want revenge on the sheriff, the keeper of the law. The sheriff scours the town looking for support, a posse of townspeople who will help him defend their community from the outlaws. The townspeople know… Continue reading High Noon this Easter
I run a charity called “Hyphen-21”. The charity holds and manages funding for a project which publishes bilingual poem-posters. Since the Spring of 2017, this project has been called “Poems for …the wall” (before that it was called “Poems for…). Since it first began in 1997, “Poems for…the wall” has been funded by the UK… Continue reading Rome Burning
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… Continue reading BALLAD OF REFUGE by David Punter
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
Owl sculpture by Dorothy Love… Continue reading The Brain's a Tunnel
This beast has our country’s contours
written all over it.
It has leapt from out of the ruins
of the city, those hollow squares,
and from the great labrynth below ground
where the thread got tangled,
and from the wi-fi and the wires
through which we… Continue reading Naming the Beast of the Year
Copyright © Rogan Wolf – Poet and Social Worker
In all our sanctuaries we sit at risk
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