The Lucidity of Failure
Twelve hundred years after Po Chü-I, as summer ends, evenings
grow chilly,
damp, grey with foreboding, same news – autumn …failure…white
hairs…cups of
wine. And no spiritual fragrance offsets the decay, the soul rank as
its flesh, all fermenting
desires, the ten thousand things still unremarked. And still illness,
death, leaking roofs, parting from friends. Though what Po Chü-I tactfully failed to explain
is that friends can part
even while sitting with wine…that friendship’s an unspoken contract
where each party vows not to mention the other’s faults, sins, limitations and shrinkages –
the very things so atrociously clear to the lucidity of failure. It doesn’t take journeys to
render friends ten thousand leagues apart. Journeys would help in fact. They wouldn’t
have to sit in silence, frowning into lucent wine… wanting only to say the things that can
never be said.
Page(s) 14
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