Michael Horovitz
For Adrian Mitchell at 70
Pied piper, loved mentor,
Blake child, firebrand,
War hater, peace planter
—Adrian! thou art living at this hour
Thank fuck.
Your care for every beast and flower
Is our good luck.
Where would Albion’s Muse be today
Without you?
—Still stuck
In the nothing-new
Pseudo-intellectual prison
of an exam room without a view.
So keep on keeping on
True horseman
With the sainted Celia* at your side,
And however dread the nightmares
Go on schooling us to ride
Keep runing out the songs
And the poems and the plays
That map the concrete ways
To fight, and overcome the wrongs.
“Poetry
glues your soul together
Poetry
wears dynamite shoes
Poetry is
the spittle on the mirror” **
—Yea! Your life’s work
Lifts us up,
Up and athwart
All those creeping
Heartless, mindless
Ill-willed, No-hope
Blue-oo-ues . . . . . .
* Celia is Adrian’s wife and muse of 40 years, who also turned 70 last year.
** — from Adrian Mitchell’s ‘Tyger: A Celebration of the Life and Work of William Blake’, Cape 1971.
Page(s) 55
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