This is fascinating, Alison. I've just been reading it out aloud and the
sonic effect is exhilarating. Some lines or phrasings stand out, 'hearing
the sky/ clap above them', for example, or the washing of hands. I did
wonder though about a certain impulse towards abstraction 'freedom was
bought ' for instance, or the use of adjectives +at times+: 'obscene',
'filthy' and the like. They seem a little predictable or standard to me. But
those are very early reactions, and thanks for posting such an exciting
piece of writing.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, April 06, 2003 2:44 AM
Subject: Poem
The virgin bride sleeps dully on her throne,
atrocity a blue scum on her eyelids.
Small boys scrawl obscene cartoons
or pause in their quarrels, hearing the sky
clap open above them, before they return
to a greater ferocity. Certainty breasts the horizon
with a cargo of skulls, high on its bridge
a flag of surgical hygiene, and everywhere
sounds a dim splashing as hands are washed
in military-grade disinfectant. The mortar
of civilisation was always the blood in the keystone.
Timur's descendents scanned the heavens
with instruments of torture, freedom was bought
with the bourgeoisie's guillotine, beneath
the Doge's gilded maps were layers of stone cells
with iron doors impenetrable as the faces
of informers. Salvaged from history books
the bloodprice shrieks to the burning heavens
its raw and filthy anguish.
Soon a noble moral will be drawn
out of the entrails of children.
6/4/03
--
Alison Croggon
Editor
Masthead Online
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
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