certainly a film
always was
yes
woman & world
that is a basis
& then the fine adjustments
thanks
L
On 12 November 2014 16:18, Doug Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> It sounds, Lawrence, well (I see your 2 sees & agree but), but it shows: &
> so I too saw a kind of film, in which it struck me that both woman & world
> were under attack, & given the discussion in Canada these days on violence
> against women, heard it that way... the focus close, then way far out, then
> close again...
>
> Doug
> On Nov 12, 2014, at 6:05 AM, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > Thanks, Patrick, sort of! I mean... I think it has a dimension of which I
> > was not aware as I sent the poem.
> > I never thought I'd be quoting Bob Geldoff, but I heard him say the other
> > day that Ebola is all the worse because people dare not touch each other.
> > That brings my flirtation with animated film down to earth.
> > And yet what I had in mind IS as bad as subject
> > I shall now withdraw inside my poem singing Can't hear you la la la
> >
> > L
> >
> > On 12 November 2014 12:39, Patrick McManus <
> [log in to unmask]>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> L Yes those Ebola images -all mixed up -nightmare -cheers P anyway
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On
> >> Behalf Of Tim Allen
> >> Sent: 12 November 2014 11:38
> >> To: [log in to unmask]
> >> Subject: Re: distress
> >>
> >> Oh Lawrence that is good. I immediately thought of that awful footage
> from
> >> last night's Channel 4 news on ebola. Did you?
> >>
> >> Cheers
> >>
> >> Tim
> >>
> >> On 12 Nov 2014, at 11:23, Lawrence Upton wrote:
> >>
> >>> A little woman lies hunched upon a floor.
> >>>
> >>> Her bones ache, she says. I'm rotting, she says.
> >>>
> >>> She rocks. She rots, inside. Her body's damp
> >>>
> >>> as yester year's fallen bough; it's hollow
> >>>
> >>> and weak, but not with the softness of youth
> >>>
> >>> and health. Her rocking accelerates
> >>>
> >>> till the image is blurred; and the figure
> >>>
> >>> rising to full height, groaning, some, in arcs
> >>>
> >>> yet widening in which she swings pendulously
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> eventually an half-circle is reached.
> >>>
> >>> Axles and con-rods bud; and, over that,
> >>>
> >>> the sound of half-vocalised moaning. Our eyes
> >>>
> >>> move back on a broad angle; and we can see
> >>>
> >>> that she is part of a car being driven
> >>>
> >>> across pleasant countryside by a man
> >>>
> >>> with his foot down on the accelerator.
> >>>
> >>> He has a smile. He turns on loud radio.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> The woman's noise continues and increases;
> >>>
> >>> and, above the sound of a broadcast, the man
> >>>
> >>> hears a fault of peculiar symptoms.
> >>>
> >>> He stops the car and listens; the anguish
> >>>
> >>> near silenced, but ,immediately, not quite.
> >>>
> >>> He opens the door and the pain sound stops. He goes
> >>>
> >>> to the car front. The sun shines. He walks backwards,
> >>>
> >>> away from the car.
> >>>
> >>> Focus upon the man,
> >>>
> >>> on to the torso, his chest and his head's
> >>>
> >>> lower half. He has a respiratory complaint.
> >>>
> >>> He wheezes. His eyes glint. The sun reflects
> >>>
> >>> from desolate blue sea, each eye a small globe,
> >>>
> >>> one of which we are approaching. We cross
> >>>
> >>> the coast of Africa and head inland.
> >>>
> >>> The course of a large river staggers across.
> >>>
> >>> We climb and the river becomes a vein in a wrist.
> >>>
> >>> We rise further and the whole of Africa fills
> >>>
> >>> half our picture. Beyond the horizon,
> >>>
> >>> the wall of a nose rises to occlude the sun.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Soon we've spanned a world, zigzagging, rising,
> >>>
> >>> falling to make detail or take broad views.
> >>>
> >>> Crossing the Irish Sea, we lose both height
> >>>
> >>> and speed. We descend into moist clouds, with Wales
> >>>
> >>> hardly visible, and out over scrappy
> >>>
> >>> woods in central England.
> >>>
> >>> People look up,
> >>>
> >>> but we don't see; till, on an unlit road,
> >>>
> >>> we see the flash of a small torch as a man
> >>>
> >>> walks to his car, gets in, and slams its door
> >>>
> >>> then starts the engine.
> >>>
> >>> And our feet touch the decaying earth surface
> >>>
> >>> of uncut grass and the dank fallen leaves.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> She is turned and turned on a complex winch.
> >>>
> >>> The noise of human distress is rising up.
> >>>
> >>> She's spun quickly in his steaming kitchen.
> >>>
> >>> She's swerved to avoid legs of police horses
> >>>
> >>> and a truncheon descending. She rushes to grab
> >>>
> >>> food from the back of a lorry; flailing her arms,
> >>>
> >>> she spins, the propeller of an overhead fan,
> >>>
> >>> wailing with hurt in a queue in jostles in a crash
> >>>
> >>> in an argument. She stumbles on steep hills;
> >>>
> >>> trees fall and crush the beneath bushes. Her too.
> >>
> >
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
> http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
> Latest books:
> Continuations & Continuations 2 (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=962
> Recording Dates
> (Rubicon Press)
>
> If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
> little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and
> sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
>
> Thomas De Quincey
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