As Trevor has raised the issue of collaboration, I thought I might post
this, as much for its curiosity value as anything else. It goes back quite
a few years and is what might be called an accidental collaboration.
One day, for no special reason, I stuck, without explanation, a slip of
paper with a couplet on it in a colleague's pigeon-hole.
The next day, lo, I found a quatrain in mine. And so it went on.
One curiousity was that Jim and I never mentioned this to each other -- the
evolving poem seemed to exist in it's own special universe.
Robin
OBLIQUE DIALOGUE
(Robin Hamilton/Jim Friedman)
On the Roundabout Again
Surrounded by a brutal innocence,
I trace the stations of my cross.
Reply
Who made the cross? Whose hand allied
The dove-tailed wood and glue?
Its carpenter was crucified,
Who nailed Longinus too.
Under Which God?
Annealed in such a crucible,
our poise is absolute, inscrutable;
We proffer judgement, but risk no commitment
lest we die as Pentheus, or Marsyas.
Choices
Exits, entrances -
cradled in this labyrinth -
are legendary.
Love's thread tugs leftwards,
reassuring the right hand
will of swordsmanship.
We are committed
to their choice, the Minotaur
or Ariadne;
travelling the maze
between them purposively,
agent not author.
To give up purpose
pay the price of thread and sword,
feel lost, paranoid.
Reply
Fire down below: what rages in the depths?
Intricate frenzy of the heart or head.
A sword is double-edged, both tongue and hand,
Unity one note wrung from Pentheus' or Marsyas' throat -
But to what god, what hero, the dedication?
Oblique Reply
An actor resting;
searching for a part, a play,
though rest is life-long.
Posing in the wings,
am I written or writing
this tailor-made role
of thin cameos,
this minor dedication
to auditioning?
Man with a Loaded Tiger
Buskins for mask to hide his godhead,
the author limps across the pit
Shuffling his puppets like a conjuror -
we are his latest, finest hit.
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