London Poems

VAN GOGH’S SUNFLOWERS

Mom always wanted a copy of this painting.

Yellow, she said, was her favourite colour.

The golden sunflowers droop, full blown over the lip of the saffron vase,

Arching towards the olive tabletop.

Set against an icterine background,

The yellows are dull yet hopeful,

And stenciled in cerulean on the vase, a name:

Vincent.

----

THE PARTHENON MARBLES

I have not often contemplated eternity in a block of stone.

Scenes of glory and bloodshed,

Etched, erased and preserved by the hands of masters:

Sculptors, time, historians.

With Keats before me and millions after,

I write to create, to preserve.

And we hope that one day our work will be as precious.

----

UNTITLED

Zeus dominates the skyline,

His rod of lightning stretching every higher.

Poseidon rules in the Thames,

Quenching the thirst of the metropolis.

Hades blows his foul hot breath through the tunnels of the Underground.

----

CITY GIRL

“It took no practiced eye to see at a glance

that the Londoner was different…”

Sixty-seven years ago

These words were written about a time

Three-hundred and fifty years before.

Another time, an older age,

As true today as ever.

The Londoner is quick but unhurried,

Busy but not frantic.

She spends her leisure in the shops, in the streets, in the park –

Shopping, socializing, sunbathing – when the weather permits.

She is call, collected, cool,

Even in the face of the pushing, sultry, sweaty crowds aboard the evening Tube.

She has learned not just to survive, but how to live in her world of speed and quickness.

She is who I want to see in the mirror.

----

THE ENGLISH VOICE

The English voice

Is at once softer and more harsh than its American cousin.

Clipped consonants, rounded vowels,

The sound of eloquence to my untrained ears.

The sound of drama, conditioned by the BBC,

At once soothing and frightening,

Strange and familiar.

----

PORTRAIT OF AN UNKNOWN LADY

High on the wall

In a great gilt frame

She sits by her window,

Her raven hair curling over one bair shoulder.

Her gown of brown and blue is simple,

Different from the others Peter Lely has painted:

Barbara Palmer, the Countess of Castlemaine,

Frances Stewart, the Duchess of Richmond,

The mistresses of Charles the Second.

But her face is the same as theirs,

Her hair coiffed à la mode in Lely’s familiar style.

She could be Moll Davis or Nell Gwynne,

But there’s no way to tell –

Lely’s faces all look the same.

----

CAPTURED

A spiderweb.

An impassable labyrinth of asphalt and cobblestone.

It will reach you from across the world,

And pluck you out of your comfortable suburban life

And consume you.

Spires of steel, glass, and chrome,

The skyscrapers look soft against the jagged iron and Gothic sandstone of churches

and castles.

And fluttering over all, the Union Jack.

You will wander,

And just when you think you’ve found your way

You realize you’re lost.

Eventually you’ll get out,

And you’ll return home,

But you will never escape.

You will never be free.

----

EAST COAST LINE

Faster and faster,

Like magnets,

Pulling us forward in one long, straight line

Until we reach our destination,

Our destiny.

Pulling us inexorably forward,

And we cannot return.

The rail lines cross the country in every direction –

North, South, East, West –

And we travel blindly

Through space,

Through time,

Not knowing that we can never return to the exact place from whence we left.

Past the windows of the train,

Images flash:

Farms, villages, castles, the North Sea.

Slide projections of our lives,

Snapshots of memory

Seen for an instant and gone forever.

SHERWOOD FOREST

Dappled earthen floor,

Shadows in the shape of aspen and oak leaves.

This is a place of magic.

Robin and his merry men once ran here.

Still I hear their whispers

Echoed by the shifting branches overhead.

In a forest as old as the world

And green as anything,

Wet under an eternally gray sky,

I sip coffee and contemplate my own insignificance,

And the oak trees drop rainwater on my head.

----

Haiku Sequence

Sidewalk of Baker Street

Gum-splattered pavement,

All twenty-six shades of grey,

Sticking to my shoe.

On the Way to the Station

A touch on my head,

Unexpected in grey light:

Early morning bird poop.

Evening Tube

Warm bodies press close,

The humid breath of hundred

Fills the Underground.

Baker Street Station

The stench of years past

In Underground’s unmoving air –

Coal dust in my eye.

The Heath

Untouched for centuries,

Growing and green in the city,

Stretch of wilderness.

Waking Up

Laying in bed,

Hazy moon in the window.

Last day in London.

Numbered

The twelfth day of May,

Six pounds and seventeen steps,

Three rooms in 221B.

----

221B

Mecca in a three-room flat

Crammed impossibly full

Of reality mixed with dreams.

Tourists, worshippers, disciples

Cross the world to visit this place.

The table set for two--

Ignored in favor of the old violin

And the softly simmering test tubes on the table in the corner.

The smell of tobacco, formaldehyde, and rain

Has been smothered by the sell of cross trainers and perfume,

But the rooms remain untouched,

Everything in its rightful place,

Just as shrines are wont to be.

----

REALLY?

Is there really such a thing as reality?

Surely not here.

Not here where Robin ran,

Where Harry hunted,

Where Sherlock sleuthed.

These places,

I thought,

Existed only in stories.

----

TWO MONTHS LATER

The last night,

Standing on the corner of Marylborn and York Gate.

The sky overhead looked like water,

Blue and shaded, rippled by the wind.

Cars streamed by, red and white lights a blur in the darkness.

I tried to memorize every detail –

The cool evening breeze,

The way the air smells of grass and water and petrol,

The rushing silent sound of city traffic.

But even now it’s just a memory.

Was I ever really there?