More for Helen of Troy by Simon Mundy Read Free Book Online Page B

pausing in your stride
    You have rid the garden of me.

Topkapi Cat
    When the revolution came,
    Eight generations earlier,
    Your ancestor said the guards’ bright
    Costumes dimmed to khaki, girls
    Ambled outside the harem,
    Mice multiplied and though at night
    It became your silent playground
    There were no cushions, no fires,
    No kitchens, no fallen viziers
    Seeking the comfort of a purr,
    Warm fur and the sweet lament of the oud.

A Prayer for a New God-daughter
    Preserve the moment
    When nothing is decided:
    Not name, not the pace
    Or direction of childhood,
    The shape or frequency of love,
    The pull of money, home or duty.
    Cry for the future and smile
    At your new day, the few already past,
    And let no-one organise your mind,
    Dictate your prayers or their destination.
    Let your conquests be in hearts
    And your mercy boundless.
    Do not blame the silence
    If you cannot hear the songs,
    For they are all yours to compose.

Afternoon Excuse
    It seemed the perfect lie
    Nonlucent, impervious, elegant.
    So it remained for a day
    From the first insistent message
    To the fluent second, too fluent,
    The embellishment, the doubt trigger
    The new unnecessary place where you
    Had to be for the satisfaction of the gods.
    Did you decide early or only
    In the morning when the dread set in?

Society Haiku
    So, Mr. Prufrock,
    How’s the rest of your week look?
    Mega exciting?

Translated Daughter
    After Auden
    and the art of Klara Pokrzywko
    Translated daughter
    Who prints a foot
    Into virgin paper
    Or compliant silver
    Leaves a torso
    To bronze in the sun,
    Takes the sweat
    Of spent bodies
    Tainting the sheets
    And hangs them
    To dry in the wind.
    Come down then
    And blend the acid
    With immortal fire
    To catch a version
    Of your arms and teats
    Your curling lips
    Against this skin
    Startle this itinerant
    Mortal to perform
    And serenade
    The natal moment
    We transform
    This sombre night
    Into glorious dawn.

Olympic Love
    You are my cauldron, my petals of flame
    Consuming hope, dropping molten rings
    Here, there, nowhere near enough
    For even a pentathlete to reach your body.
    I want you to dive from aeroplane high clouds,
    Cut the water silently, touch and score gold.
    When you step up to bow your head
    For the medal, freshly cast, this special anthem
    Will banish nations and tell how you,
    My sweet youth across the world,
    Have gathered at these games for me alone.

The New Senedd, Cardiff
    A Poem for the Opening, St. David’s Day 2006 .
    Watch the words fly in their aviary of toughened
    Glass, mingling with other languages,
    Obfuscating in front of everybody as if it were decent
    To debate without resolution, their consonants
    Finished with the thud of English,
    The crack of Welsh drugging meaning
    Until they float from the chimney of the politics bothy
    Or are netted, protesting their innocence
    And captured digitally for all to read,
    Shameless in the cold of history.

A Vote for Absence
    That was an unusual manifesto by any standards,
    A plea for anti-votes, for noughts not crosses.
    The crosses were no protection
    And the noughts contained no promises.
    Thirteen candidates were enough to cause
    Alarm but escape from the conclusions was futile,
    The message from the people clear but silent.
    All twelve party candidates had voted crossly for themselves,
    Thirty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty-seven voters
    Approved their choice with nought. Abstentions won.
    The others were all equally cancelled, the noughty manifesto
    Adopted – no more laws nor regulations,
    Three terms results in surfeit, redundancy rules.

Lines...
    Commemorating the European Commission Conference ‘Dialogue Between Peoples and Cultures: the Artists and Cultural Actors, Held for Two Days in Brussels’ Palais de Beaux Arts (BOZAR) During the Brussels Bravo Festival, February 2005 under the Patronage of President Barroso of the Commission and Repeated at the Berliner Konferenz A Soul For Europe, November 2007 to Official