Fine Art
The Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Group (the MFA &A), set up towards the end of the Second World War, had the daunting and depressing task of rescuing buildings and works of art in the aftermath. Buildings had to be sealed to protect them from looters and soldiers looking for billets.
Eight of us, nothing
but ingenuity on our side.
Yesterday I hitched a lift
from an army truck,
then stole a German car.
Today the petrol ran out.
Tomorrow I’ll take a bicycle,
find that damaged church
with medieval frescoes.
When I’ve explored,
lifting fallen plaster gingerly,
and found no booby-traps,
I’ll cover it in white tape
to indicate unexploded bombs.
Then I’ll nap in its shadow.
Thirteen thousand miles
across this wrecked country
in the last two weeks,
prying into monasteries
and chateaux,
sleeping in hedges,
no camera, no typewriter,
just white tape, a notebook
and the shutter of my mind.
A child’s doll mouldering by the road.
Thin dogs hunting for scraps.
Crops rotting in the fields.
Two dead women in a kitchen.
Nothing there for me.
I uncrease my map and head north,
towards the river.
I can’t think about severed hands
reaching from the rubble.
Page(s) 20-21
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