Harry Guest
The Sorcerer's Squares
or One Way To Read Paul Klee
This grid of pastel colours could be roofs,
crooked chimney—pots, high factories, pale fields beyond them —
the raw material of bricks and sunlight for a child to organise
into a lyric city set on a tidal river.
The mudflats glisten. Fishermen berth their punts among reeds.
The cry from a tower is sung in an unknown language.
Birds dart from the tiny gardens. At night there are fireworks.
Dry hills rise a little inland where tombs are cut
and when they’re sealed the wind brings sand to drift over the lintel.
That bluegrey patch low down proves an enigma —
the wrong place for a glimpse of sky or smoke billowing,
not quite the correct sheen for water and anyway
even in a fairy-story ponds don’t lie at an angle.
No, it must be an enormous carpet hung out to be beaten.
The prince and his bride will need to walk free of dust.
Flecks within flecks leave scope for differing views,
which is as it should be: find somewhere for hope to inhabit,
where in narrow yards between houses the grass stays clean,
where walls are painted pink or blue or primrose,
kept free of posters, free of slogans, never scrawled on,
where passers-by smile before greeting each other and where
no trace remains of a market after the trading is over.
crooked chimney—pots, high factories, pale fields beyond them —
the raw material of bricks and sunlight for a child to organise
into a lyric city set on a tidal river.
The mudflats glisten. Fishermen berth their punts among reeds.
The cry from a tower is sung in an unknown language.
Birds dart from the tiny gardens. At night there are fireworks.
Dry hills rise a little inland where tombs are cut
and when they’re sealed the wind brings sand to drift over the lintel.
That bluegrey patch low down proves an enigma —
the wrong place for a glimpse of sky or smoke billowing,
not quite the correct sheen for water and anyway
even in a fairy-story ponds don’t lie at an angle.
No, it must be an enormous carpet hung out to be beaten.
The prince and his bride will need to walk free of dust.
Flecks within flecks leave scope for differing views,
which is as it should be: find somewhere for hope to inhabit,
where in narrow yards between houses the grass stays clean,
where walls are painted pink or blue or primrose,
kept free of posters, free of slogans, never scrawled on,
where passers-by smile before greeting each other and where
no trace remains of a market after the trading is over.
Page(s) 11
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