Saturday 5 May 2018

2 Poems by Geoffrey Heptonstall

AN ISLAND IN THE MIND

High winds are coming down the coast
with bitter rain that falls as snow
in the vicinity of Sacramento.
We know where the cause lies
among favours to friends
in unelected affinities
that ravage the earth for gold.
We see the work of the worst,
whether or not we know why
the world is changing by the hour.

The time is to walk down
an avenue of optimism,
seeking the signs of harmony
among rumours of the future.
We find behind the hidden door
an island in the mind,
the city that lives within
those who follow the sound
of the rivers that flow
from the days of rage and love.

Never will the world be gone
while what we imagine moves
in our opening mind.
And a new moon risen
not yet trespassed
in dreaming reality
of a lyre in the wind,
of a page turning,
of the final chapter,
the one that is unending.


LISTENING FOR HIS SONG

The leaves on the tree are shaken in the wind.
Soon they will fall with the season,
to scatter with the ice-wind storms
of an oncoming winter.

How at this hour may we write
an authentic English style
when there are so many empires
so variously textured in voices
straining to speak their lives
encircling the world with words?

Some names inscribed are fading
as the stone itself darkens
in the autumn light of time.
All that was summer has found
the slow descent of mortality
suited to the mood of memorial.

One name remains
                               floating in the air,
leaf-like and silent
                               where there was song.



Bionote

My novel, Heaven's Invention, now available in revised paperback. Recent short fiction in Scarlet Leaf Review. Recent poetry in Penwood Review. Recent essay [on Picasso's Guernica] in the Global Dispatches.

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