Dire fires threaten dire paintings,
Set by dire men, defending dire idols
Who tied their hands to the crescent moon.

War broke out in the studio,
Getting further from the truth.

Blazing through the skies above,
From deserted continents,
They cook the dove.

"Down with the towers,
Blow the roof!
Down with the active streets,
And those with minds aloof!"

Yet in the battle halls,
A canvas there for eyes in awe,
While behind the towers fall,
The pen is drawn,
The pennons bawl.

Yet echoing through the city streets,
The innocent fall to the ground,
As fires set upon the town!
The pennons show a winning streak,
By force while their emotions leak.

"Down with the warlords,
Let us draw!
Down with the active planes,
And deadly bombs!"

Between the clash of different laws,
From above,
A single sheet sinks down unharmed.
Flowing through the blackened fog,
Gracefully, it mocks the sacred hog.

"I know this guy who sought divine,
And was believed to speak His lines.
He lost this truth by middle-life,
But through his lies he claimed a wife.

"Don't let him gaze upon your children,
Fight his old-age desperation.
Spill the ink to blind his vision,
Tie his hands to the crescent moon."

Battle cries and splitting shots were silenced,
Even spitting fires ceased to whisper.
As the graceful insults fell aground,
Laughter struck the once conflicting crowd!

foam floral caps, work of wet hydrangea,        

                          or pulse of caucasian lilacs in a sky-relieved frieze.        

                                   cambric pennons swag reconsidering      

                                          margins of wimpling burn,      

                                        wherein the stars…twiring stars,    

                                    the declining stars, moon and planets        

                                                            tur­ned--



                                      purchase light with morning-hands:        

                                         ­         green-bedizened;      

                                              amber trammeling bud.      

                                          absolve qualm suffusing tyre,      

                                             violet’s violent leniency--        

                                            a­nd feel, o’bask! in velvet      

                                                   ­ flume of veins,        

                                          as beams of conspiracy raise      

                                                  to­ post and lintel,      

                                         crutching a young god’s legs--



                                      and feel, o’supplicate!  bathe in      

                                                day’s anatomies,      

                                   til greave deposit in lacunary sleeves,    

                                   and a genuflecting sun bow eternally--

Southward with fleet of ice
Sailed the corsair Death;
Wild and gast blew the blast,
And the east-wind was his breath.

His lordly ships of ice
Glisten in the sun;
On each side, like pennons wide,
Flashing crystal streamlets run.

His sails of white sea-mist
Dripped with silver rain;
But where he passed there were cast
Leaden shadows o’er the main.

Eastward from Campobello
Sir Humphrey Gilbert sailed;
Three days or more seaward he bore,
Then, alas! the land-wind failed.

Alas! the land-wind failed,
And ice-cold grew the night;
And nevermore, on sea or shore,
Should Sir Humphrey see the light.

He sat upon the deck,
The Book was in his hand;
“Do not fear! Heaven is as near,”
He said, “by water as by land!”

In the first watch of the night,
Without a signal’s sound,
Out of the sea, mysteriously,
The fleet of Death rose all around.

The moon and the evening star
Were hanging in the shrouds;
Every mast, as it passed,
Seemed to rake the passing clouds.

They grappled with their prize,
At midnight black and cold!
As of a rock was the shock;
Heavily the ground-swell rolled.

Southward through day and dark,
They drift in cold embrace,
With mist and rain, o’er the open main;
Yet there seems no change of place.

Southward, forever southward,
They drift through dark and day;
And like a dream, in the Gulf-Stream
Sinking, vanish all away.

THE PONIES IN SNOW PARK


Under flapping green and white awnings
On a wide Toronto street I feel your gloved hand on my tweed coat.
You are cold. We run. It is one o'clock, winter afternoon.
Waiting for the car to warm up we touch mouths and tongues.

This is what I always wanted. We are young. We are wearing
Our favourite clothes. The green and orange plastic pennons
Of the service station slap in the wind.  The ponies stand
Far away, at the edge of the woods in Snow Park.

Some bear their share of the burden of the meaning of life
More easily than others. I know that
When you are alone you must build walls
And figure ways to smash them down.

I know how some mouths opened over you
Like Borgia rings over a wineglass, and how, therefore, it was
Hard for you to abandon the problem many of us loved:
How can I avoid doing harm; how can I avoid harm?

Out of the changes in human emotion,
Out of the changes in faces and lives,
You took the power to do with me what once
You might have done for sadness, or for love, alone.

Our shape refuses depression.
I point at birds. There is music on the radio.
I grin and hug. A few silver minutes now
Of ponies, music, dull orange breast feathers.

                              Paul Anthony Hutchinson

This poem was published in WAVES
pahutchinson@icloud.com
Copyright  Paul Anthony Hutchinson
  www.paulanthonyhutchinson.com