Port Sunlight
for Lord Leverhulme
I found Italy at the top
of London, Roman Italy
in an extended pergola
walk for the Emperor, a bar
of soap by a terrace water
jar at his fiesty disposal
as if he had a Tuscan girl
at hand for a wine ablution,
in an evening with no vespers
as Constantine had yet to rule
on a hill in Byzantium
and, also - Londinium.
Sunlight in an alcove
with a plinth for a gone statue
to an enfilade of columns
adores flaky cream stone
October 26th 2016 + cf
The Pergola Garden Inverforth
Gate Sunlight
Is the belvedere a rapture
gate ? Far in the rose pergola
high above a terrace, I met
a young woman climbing a last
stair, as if daring in an act
of surprise, and she turned toward
me and we both looked below
at the formal garden.
Sunlight
made our balustrade afternoon.
Quiet, I turned to her and said :
how beautiful. With a searing
smile, she gazed at me. Thank you
she replied, almost beatific
at my apparent compliment,
uttered for the urn afternoon
there, and not intended for her
until we reached the belvedere.
October 26th 2016 + in situ
Gate Sunlight II
What could have happened
in the belvedere ? What vistas out
there, of hill and sky-run purple
after a being so together ?
Could we, loving in an alcove
of the pergola-reach loggia
after guessing in the enfilade
expire in a state of rapture
after being so very tentative ? but
she had quite misunderstood
me, perhaps wanting a desire
for her that would never tire, were
she to be oceanic with pleasure
in a manner of speaking, in a rush
of delight lasting all night,
off her astonishment about her
in the vastness of the afternoon,
trusting it might go on forever.
We would fly in our own weather
November 29th 2019 June 2nd 2021 +
exact timelines have become uncertain
Invocation
Near the loggia candles
about an indigo portico
for the high priestess,
you bare a trove of sunlight
in a swimming bowl :
your figurine, bronze
casts a long shadow,
the fresh fish crackle lunar
as you script all-knowing.
pbl in The Editor An Anthology
for Patricia Oxley Rockingham
Press (2011) 2 more texts post :
Panegyric Credits
I met the Artist Bea Bonfini at her Exhibition
at The Zabludowicz Collection in July 2017.
She restored my faith in fine art ; her set were
all elegant and intelligent. The encounter led
me to view her beautiful video Intertwined
(2016) which is a performance art film set in
a complex relationship, with one Konstantina
Skalionta. It was filmed dramatically superbly
in The Pergola Garden, yes, and the environs
of Inverforth House....
I presume I viewed it after my writing the first
Portal two texts shown here ; my Gate Sunlight
deals with an encounter with a young, perusing
photographer, not Bea Bonafini : but II is a long
extrapolation, if nothing else...and who is there.
Starter creative pointers were Robert Browning,
the late Henry James (his poetry) and the work
of mid T.S. Eliot in his inimitable La Figlia Che
Piange. October 9th - a wip note
=============================
Night City
A birth in the tombs,
the trap door open
a bell tower silent
the night is a lean cat
hung out to dry,
the moon river ferry
a run of dreams, dawn
a trace of rare light
on brooding brick.
Pbl in Bologna + photo
in Private 38-39 in Spring
2007. Composed in 2005
Nighthawks
The alleys that were fuming
have grown cold, the dare
glitz of sunset on a top floor
window gone with a secret
lover into the new night
of a dark map of streets
alive with deja vu, the walk
in a dream to the roads' end
where you set out at dawn,
the ever tramps at a brazier
in the one way system gone
round on itself to the Hotel
of a circuit of desire
and the night will eye itself
as if a night with zero end
staring at the girl in a mirror
looking at the neon wall
behind her bare lit back,
her lover entering the room
in a pool of silence they
will circle to a joining
by dawn in their one night.
written 2005 for Bologna
Early Franco-Roman work pbl. by Acumen
Within Walls
After a woman singing
in ecstasy for over an hour,
we turned in the dusty sunlight
through a grooved colonnade,
saw the fountains played as a
water-harp by an aqueduct.
Studied, fixed on a bright dome
the ten golden peacocks
always strutting into eternity.
Even so, time just made
off with us, in love
beneath a striped awning
and later at a table.
pbl. Acumen 23 September 1995
some fine-tuning due --as > to
maybe always > fairly
striped > red-striped
Hearth
The summer people have gone
into their world below, leaving little
memory of time hinged only for desire
giving onto the blue, a butterfly :
the morning mist
drifting over an autumn ridge
comes more often and earlier,
the smell of pine lengthening
from a mountain, the valley
is keener, sharper
than the icy
blade of longing running far
through a linkage of the heart,
the pain growing, sweet woodsmoke
creeping up from each
flint or granite fire beneath
gnarled worn beams. A dog
can now amble into the road ;
rarely, the timber piled so high :
a buzzard wings lower.
pbl. Acumen 38 September 2000
locale pres de La Louvesc Ardeche
===============================
Back back story ex the 1970s relevant ex
A Progress (in the HCS) ring-bound pbl.
The Hall
As they were granted afternoon tea,
between a quiet cup and a plate
lay the un-visionary dry nadir
of the drying, mesmerised heart -
the mesmerising, hidden agony
can sometime wither to nothing.
And hell may tour earth, any afternoon,
in the inquisitory light of spoons,
or stay mental and hovering in the shade.
Sunlight brightens objects, and the shade.
An orange streetlamp alone at noon
lightens no damp days. Then hell resides
in a winking amusement arcade,
a chamber of phoney horrors,
or a funny hall of mirrors.
Today, the guest doesn't know hell ;
the patient's eyes have grown
tired, as if at a fairground,
he's a flattering mirror
dazed but not dulled over.
He can't hear the man near heaven ; and
blank angels striding the configuration.
June 3rd 1974 fully set to 4 line Stanzas
Garden Furniture
Elegant, and not wintering under cover
aging deserted garden furniture
seats no sedentary ghosts,
on occasions a table is almost
a table in an aviary
sure as any grass area ;
but now a hospitable stain
hidden inebriates the grain
and now meditative flies reminisce
as if pausing over memories ;
the obsessed greying divorcee
must depart from curative friends
into the windswept, lonely and casual,
the humdrum hallucination,
the consumptive, mirroring seasonal
traffic bold in the sun,
and in her window's artificial breeze
wound down on hot stylish upholstery
in an inclusive
morning world of morning
be wanting abstract junctions
of innocence and wrong.
April 20th 1974 shortened into Stanzas
Week-end Retreats
'Thou art a day of mirth' ex
Sunday by George Herbert
The arbitrary, un-hovering hours
are inhospitable and sobering
administering no benediction ;
then a man, cowering in reverence
strolls his dog slower than usual
in trying to transcend the countrywide mass
un-festive stupor as the dog stirs
invisible fungi of the grass ;
waiting for a dog to finish
in the field of vision, Sunday is found
as a condemned, un-boarded vacuum
standing empty, musty and derelict ;
but Louise and Jane want the nearing horn
of a nearing familiar fast car,
not the gaily painted ice-cream van
touring the repetitious country estate
cornering a watching, attendant afternoon,
the chiming tune/ charming around
a man's threshold of widening,
widening, and staring quiet.
March 15th 1974 Line 18 from 2 lines
likewise into Stanzas - cf Northchapel
nb 'Salem Down' Dec. 1973 cf 2023 pf
low entry on top bar pf September Sad
3 + Bnot Yaakov Bridge (1972) -2023
typed tuned on www.zenspacia2.co.uk
A Sunday By The Soane
written Remembrance Day Nov 14th 1971
Sunday, it is Lyons, the air is grey, is lead and between
bridges, in the Saone's long, slow, massive and inexorable
mud-brown liquid's flow, an old man has sunk his head -
the eyes and years are, have been, long since dragged away downstream ;
sunday, it is morning, so around the hills, clang, clang the churches chime,
the old man, brain coiled and writhing, maybe starts and stutters a little,
his cheek strings seem to have snapped, clang, clang, the massed bells go,
his tongue is dry, is leather - he cannot connect ;
the face and jaw like a baby chick's,
but twisted, broken.
Pbl. The Marlburian Michaelmas Term 1971 -
the first of five poems (with others) published.
One line is a seventeener - perhaps altered pt
cf the relevant photos on zenstructures.com :
ZW 68 Provence La Ciotat Old Lyons 1971
Growths
His room-light out, along neoned passage,
up over-hanging stair he staggers -
swallowed by more room, onto a solitary
gaping bed he lurches, crumples
to implode, invert
into mounding refuse, absentia,
memory fossilised : memory forming -
o praise - praise - be stars
the spade the scythe
September 16th 1971 Tuned '25
Sometimes
Sometimes some spirit's fingertips, frail and featherlight
have delicately danced across and
caressed the outer curves of my cupped soul
to stir it away from heartbeat and even
silence's ringing in the ears into a sphere
white as ivory quiet as marble and glass
as intense and strong as beams of light,
a sphere still and with the speed of flight,
a sphere complete in all curved quiet white -
and with all thought of pentagrams parallels
hexagrams and
lines that progress digress gone.
Orchard Hall (A Portrait)
In the nearly-bare
orchard where grass now
grows by hardly a blade's-span,
the brown-bruised apples and leaves carpeting
the floor of fall form
a spare thatch where the drops of sun
on the patch furnish but a little
gold for this
fruit hall.
Published The Marlburian Lent 1971
pages 40/41 facing - section introit.
Only one survivor copy of Journal..
=============================
Summary of 3 X 60 Line Poems
all submitted in The Competitions
Anthologised by Poetry On The Lake
Orta Portfolio reference no. on site :
ZY 43 Wild Marble 2005
ZY 43 The Rising trans. Il Sogere 2006
with line art in the Anth Stranger
ZY 45 Palermo 2007...Then The '08 Crash
Background pfs that are important :
ZY 38 Rokeby Park (family, Sicily)
ZY 39 Bignor Roman Villa (childhood)
===============================
Ref ZY 41 Journey from Brabantia, file pf
'Barque' mostly biro with (yes) Belgium-
orientated Language poetry (quite) just re-
discovered. Too terrifying to revisit for now
October 14th 2025. Overarching needed...
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