Three Flowers

(felt in the aftermath of the Festival)

 

---

a kingcup
for John Riley

The eyes have it
I hum
among the endless avenues
Enclosing Gledhow

Many eyes there are in him
The glades of cloud acclaim

The marigold

Constantinople is a long event
How many eyes have seen it
How many talents spilt
the cup could not contain it

---

a buttercup among a bunch of other colours
for Denise

The cupboard is open
full of warm green shadow
This decorum
was a decorated room
I wrote it
out of frippery perhaps
peripheries or periphrasis
a pretence to grace

We are my reverence your majesty
a game of mislaid royals
full of warm green shadow

We are vetch and clover
buttercup and yarrow
Now the cupboard is untied

the blue stars of my colour in the field are
the forget-me-not, a myosotis
milky blue occluding powerful ultra-violet

the pink stars in the clough are
montia sibirica, an import into though
of infra-red
produced of streaming water

I'm going to have to find a way to Goethe

---

a scarlet poppy
for Brian Stannion

The word it was

Imagination
in his will contested
by the nephews

Fought over love
To take a castle on a hill as an exemplar

The Men of St John
the harvest of will with a sickle

I've thought and thought
I can't teach any other law than
What comes next

A deliberate act of poetry
The metalwork
of contemplating will
Transparencies of armour

& I am unpersoned in a pun
& deepened & afraid

The word is depersonified

The will is void

---

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