James, thanks for your read and comments this chilly morning. Er, haibun (?)
er now that's one I shall have to look up but I am still learning and happy
to do so. Thanks Arthur.
----- Original Message -----
From: "James Bell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2002 9:09 AM
Subject: Re: New sub: The Rock


Hefty stuff Arthur. I like the mix of prose poem and a more broken text. I
guess it's to reflect the subject of the poem. I thought you were writing a
haibun but it doesn't look like it, perhaps that may provide a loose, yet
controlled framework to place the poem in. Only a suggestion for I really
like what you have achieved here.



bw
James





>From: arthur seeley <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New sub: The Rock
>Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 08:33:37 -0000
>
>Gary's piece " A walk in Kubota gardens" has inspired me to try and rewrite
>the notes of an old piece into a prose poem sort of thing. Does it work??
>
>
>The Rock
>
>The road glitters in the heat, mirage-pools glaze the treacled sheet of
>tarmac, above it the air quivers and shimmies, then a way forks and  dips
>to
>pass through a cove of dry coolness, under the main road, that hisses and
>hums its business, and then by back ways towards Stavromenos and the dozing
>supermarket with its dusty shelves.
>
>The walls of the gloomy underpass are daubed with the incomprehensible
>strut
>of graffiti, a calligraphy that sometimes probes the calculus of time
>smeared to exhort or insult or disgust.
>
>Beyond the reach of noon             a wilt of shrivelled  weeds
>drops hopeful seeds                      into the silent gloom.
>
>I step into the hammering sun to stand upon the anvil of a baffle of old
>roads, stopped by thrust heaps of debris. Away from the main road the
>silence is intense, the air still and rich with the reek of pine and
>vapours
>of the land sucked up by summer.
>
>a struggle of ants
>debates
>bone or seed
>
>Men have left this mess of strewn rubble, gouged from the earth,  forming a
>drain to guide winter storms and spring's swift melt of high mountains
>seawards.
>
>The sun pins me to the dust that rises like smoke from the back road as it
>turns and drops down through the scar of a gulch that keeps me from my
>shopping.  It is littered by rocks brought there by floods and man's
>meddling. I teeter a path where there is no path only a ragged pavement of
>dry rock.
>
>the sun's thorns
>prick and tear
>shoulders and back
>
>The black scuttle of an old woman, quick as a beetle, under an olive tree,
>a
>bucket in her hand, turns at the corner of her house and disappears into
>the
>shade of lemon trees and vines. A tethered goat, hairy and rank, one curved
>horn broken, dances on small feet, bleats and butts at my intrusion into
>the
>heat and lull of his day. Cicadas stir in the sun-seared grasses of the
>verge, call cave on my shadow.
>
>This is not the time to be out. Locals sprawl and sweat in sleep or potter
>under lemon trees, closeted in shade and the fluttering cloisters of cool.
>I
>am a mad dog, loitering to savour the stink of old goat, listening to the
>choir of  the grass under a noonday sun.
>
>one rock
>amongst all rock
>cracked
>
>It is no bigger than my head and round as a fruit.  Its rough skin pocked
>by
>its tumultuous descent over centuries down the grey fluted flanks of the
>mass that  bulks vaguely in the haze behind me.
>
>I part it like a cut melon
>and
>first light floods, illuminates the dazzling striations, set in ancient
>silts laid down by the run of lost rivers and the sift of forgotten seas,
>from time before the Labyrinth, the roaming hunger of the Minotaur and the
>legends of Santorini.
>
>more sudden than lightning                   thrilling as untrodden snow.
>
>I view from my Colombian mast;  witness a first dawn;  discover in my heft,
>a new  world of gold and purple lands, whorls of ochre and lilac and
>sulphurous yellows, painted deserts and umber prairies, open like an unread
>book in my hands; eye-walk its hills and smooth mountains, sail its violet
>seas.
>
>weigh my world            bounded infinity
>locked from light          violated
>
>tumbled underfoot         a bewilderness
>of  locked  worlds           tremble
>
>dropped halves      fall careless
>into chaos          centuries unfold


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