Jonathan Beale- Three Poems

Finding words - finding lyrics

1. After ‘in Defence Allusion’ by Robert Pinsky

                       

THE ALL - U – SIVE

Of the allusive to deflect Shakespeare

His tremble – helpless refugee

Feeding by expression

From the French – they say

That religion is a terrible thing

Sometimes it means a great crusade

Doubtless it didn’t mean to allude

Richard and several bishops

Got lost in Jerusalem’s gutters

Run bloody - in everything

A ghostly gesture from a Catholic solider

Trundled along fed on grubs

Grown brutal - the fantasies

Who was brilliant at French?

Seen on summer through the allusion 

What?  – Unconscious – humming

Breeding like rats as starlings in America

Because man wanted a bird

They drive they drive

In the worlds rivalrous web

Of propagating shadows 

Sunday nights

The vineyard that leads to the fruit

that draws to world misconception

Being lost in the basement the windowed.

Boxes from Euclidean beginnings.

There are too many yet to come –

in this kingdom of individuals -

As they dance between us –

in a joyful need to exist among the dawn mists

making our future and meagre existence

A Vision of Barcelona by a distant lover

Her moon; under her old cloth and laced face

By the wheeling monstrance of the sun.

Air and love.  The balance keeps her child forever

Today, as every god wants to feel their dust

in their toes along with their children’s voices

in their ears. And tasting its tapas,

drink to its women, worshipping its poets. 

As they wake (on this morn).

To a new fresh moon. Watching the oceans

woven silver gleam. That never fades.