Chiffon Blouse

Preamble: when asked about the colour of her remarkable chiffon blouse, she replied a little doubtfully, "A kind of washed-out flame..."



The way I felt about her and her kiss,

the sultry evenings without intercession,

the longing ache that melted into bliss

during the sceance of a necking session -



are these no more? In life no more to be

walking down streets that lead to river shrines,

entering bars that, in her company,

became the space where midnight brightly shines?



There is an evening, gone for ever more,

even in memory never the same:

I still can see her face, the blouse she wore

of peach - "A kind," she said, "of washed out flame."



Her words, a nameless signature remain;

her star, her aura, set to rise again.

Orchard

Having spent the last few months in France Robert has been absent from his circle. Here in Kentish Town we have not forgotten about his poetry or him. I was pleased to get a postcard of The Seine at Christmas with a typical Rob offering scrawled on the back:

The bed stretches towards the window
where the Gallic light filters
through wooden blinds half closed,
and the lamp has become an electric rose.

I have lived a thousand lives already -
this one no different except for you, no longer steady;
your scented hair where all my senses flow
walking beside you - my hands tremble to go

as bees to lavender or birds to reach
the glossed cherries, yellow or turning red.
The world assembles the stillness of an orchard
in dappled sunlight falling on our bed.

+++

Happy New Year to you, Rob. We miss you at the Meeting House.

Back in the SPQR

Back in the SPQR


First I’d written full of good intentions –
I wrote a letter which began, “Dear Ovid..”
Tactless really , just by what it mentions;
His friends at least thought of him while we hid.

“Our network contacts keep us in the know,
a lifeline to our hero, and a link:
while the senate’s false seeds take and grow
anyone who denies them’s thrown in clink.

They rate me potentially subversive, a lout
who might cause trouble for the worthy scout
whose job it is to shadow me all day
guilty by association, and by that lay
you penned about my wallmanship
and later – gigglingly, I remember – wrote the quip,

‘Robutus, a man of bricks and mortal –
he is the secret portal to a wall.’

And now a group of soldiers make a din
around my pile; they’ll not let me in.
I head for the coast where breezes from the sea
will slow my pulse, and walking through the reeds
I’ll feel safe from prying scrutiny
and write to Ovid(!) – drop all other leads.
Of one thing you were right. By dream or guess,
in far away Mamaia you know about my mess.


+++

For those of you who missed the beginning of this tale on pomesonpoets here is the experience Rob sent from Rome

ROBUTUS OVIDII AMICUS

Somewhere on the third hill
beside the railway line
above the Piazza Risorgimento -
home in on Google Earth
& you can just see it among the ruins
centuries old – the tomb of Robutus, my ancestor.

I found it, separate from the vaults,
a weathered slab, sloping encrustation,
almost erased th’inscription:

“Robutus Ovidii amicus
Corpus atque moenium generis muralis
Dithirambi et carmina pro Bachi pangabat
Coluit in Roma et in Roma
Ad suum moenium recurrit”

As I stood numbly trying to translate
I seemd to stumble, blankd – the empty world
replacd the full one, pod-like, dark
thousand-year preserver of seed.
stript of all photons a floating funnel
where Dante, Michelangelo and Fellini
could be heard laughing. Their
joyful giggles accompanied
my bumpy landing in a busy market
not far from… what recognised? Those toga’d
gents – such decorum at the Forum!

The speech I heard around me
not Italian, though it had the ring, was Latin.
That much I knew, marvelled how it bubbled
from their lips – mine also – my
hot lips! Spoke in Latin, for a day
down there.
Now, a touristo inglaisie
I transcribe these notes for you
my fine friends in Kentish Town;
I'm up among Fiats and Alfas again,
sipping a tamarindo in the Via Giadorno Bruno.

Forum Mole

I wish I could remember what the letter said:
with goatskin vino, hunk of bread and cheese.
I wish I'd had a photographic memory
seated at ease in oleander shade.
(Can still see my Chaucer notes 'bout Ars Amoris
can't recall Ovid's letter, held in my hands),
can just envision shadows on a page
of freshly folded parchment, bright sun in the square.
Two things are even odder: as I write these lines
in the Amato with my rum and coke
that messenger just rode by on a Ducati;
and - second - is the doubt within my mind
not about being there reading that antique,
my doubt is whether Ovid was the author.

The one bit I can recall went something like this:
"I've grown accustomed to my supper
of stewed potato roots and boiled bread,
I've grown accustomed to vile meals
washed down with spirit from the bitter plum."
Less like Ovid - more bureaucrat, I'd say.
His office must've overlooked the Tiber, as
he penned these lines with a sweaty stylus
to make great Ovid look penitently contrite;
sent them out to fool the literati
of which Robutus - oddly you might say - was one.