Robin Ford
Two Sisters 1938 (after Stanley Spencer)
They pose in a properly furnished room,
wear fashions of the season.
Here is leisure, money - both enjoy a touch
of raffish life. But from Bohemia,
the land, there blows a faint chill breeze.
Expression and repression. Conventions
conventionally observed. The Cote d’Azur,
the Chelsea Arts, playgrounds for a little licence.
If needed one can purchase medical advice
above a shop in Westbourne Grove.
To them the world seems almost steady
although the youngish century has murdered
peace already, bloodied all and laid it out -
this is how things are - bind up your eyes
slice out the prophet’s tongue.
But an uneasy buzz can just be heard -
soon bombers swift as raptors
will swoop upon their prey -
that bookcase in the room will fly
through blasted air, books scatter in the street
secret endings shown to passers-by
all plots annihilated. Perhaps a visit
to the Café de Paris
will coincide with high society’s
special bomb on one gay evening.
The is, the was, the world to be:
a tracking beast that waits its time
belly close to ground. Earth’s faults
tensioned on a hair trigger
prepared to snap and bring down everything.
Page(s) 31
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The