Thursday 25 August 2011

To The Reader by J. V. Cunningham


TO THE READER

                                 Time will assuage.
                                 Time’s verses bury
                                 Margin and page
                                 In commentary,

                                 For gloss demands
                                 A gloss annexed
                                 Till busy hands
                                 Blot out the text,

                                 And all’s coherent.
                                 Search in this gloss
                                 No text inherent:
                                 The text was loss.

                                 The gain is gloss.


Richard Kostelanetz, Possibilities of Poetry; An Anthology of American Contemporaries (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1970), 74.

Saturday 13 August 2011

The Green Buoy by John Barnie


The Green Buoy


I’ve nothing to say to the
green buoy out there in the waves
bouncing on its chainy knees

then up riding an incomer
down floating with a swagger I’d
never say gracefully the sun

shining on its wet struts
arms akimbo Cossack dancing
Whey-hey as a big one

streams over whispering in its
kellyman ear a secret (You’re
invincible) I’m not supposed to hear.


John Barnie, The Green Buoy (Kinnerton, Presteigne, Powys: The Rack Press, 2006), 12.