Black Passing
The black country night of the present
time
goes clinking with silver down the
land,
small cries of newborn life and the
constellations
in the rocking dark of late-august
dog-days
when the near star rages and Isis goes
howling
for the body of the summer, lately
slain
in rising winds, his golden torso
broken.
These early signs of death in the
year
and loss, the escaping quality of
life,
show more brutally the small
divisions,
ownership and loneliness everywhere
here.
The year falls stumbling down, old
hobo,
landless traveller across the earth,
mendicant time who wears tattered
clothes,
whose hair is matted and thick with
experience.
And the last country night of the royal
stars
sighs in a long black avenue of
limes,
pines for the outcast in deepening
obscurity
who runs in his exodus westward,
once-green messiah of the bells and
horns,
hat full of rainbows and coloured
twilights,
crowned king of imperious summer,
gone.
April Time
In April time when the world opens its
doors
I look again at the casual bliss of all
things.
Down on the inland waterways I
return,
studying the vernal wind in its
adventures,
watching ghostly reflections on an old
wall.
I am in search of happiness. Nothing
more.
Sometimes I see a young couple in the
sunlight,
patching the old wooden cruiser which is their
home.
A blue sky and a white marina terrify
me
because in some way she resembles
you.
There is a happy man in the intimate
twilight
where an old boat rocks hypnotically, a bed of
love.
I walk on hardly able to bear the
comparison.
Here is a strange seed which has taken
root
in the side of a wall, halfway up the
sky,
vertical oasis on an empty brick-face,
foolish
climber from the condition of everyday
weeds,
strand of something that somehow resembles
me.
I will lie down here, contemplate this
mooring
not yet in the harbour of the calm sky
above,
nor lashed by salvation in a crystal city,
yet
still some distance from old ambiguities
below.
Who can reckon the nearness of the
sun,
only a wind-shaken finger to measure the
sky?
Aidan Andrew Dun is British.
He's had two epic poems published in the UK by Goldmark, Vale
Royal in 1995, Universal in 2002. The first of these earned praise
from Derek Walcott, who said 'Vale Royal moves with the ease and the
clarity of a fresh spring over ancient stones, making its myths casual, even
colloquial-- an impressive achievement.' The theme of Vale Royal (which
is composed in terza rima) is the psychogeography of the Kings Cross area of
London. Universal has also been widely reviewed, notably in the TLS,
where John Greening compared it to Ezra Pound's Cantos. He has a third
epic in first draft and a fourth in preparation.
His shorter poems have
been published in many British and some European journals. The London Magazine
has published shorter pieces but two medium length poems (not epics) have also
found their way into that journal. His work is now beginning to appear quite
widely on the web.
He was born in London but raised in the West Indies. He
now lives in Hampstead, North London, Keats-country. His house is visible from
where he sits to write on Parliament Hill.
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