Hugh Underhill
In the year of the Paris Great Exhibition
I chance being born, this year
of their hope, this girl and youth
on top the Soviet Pavilion.
They have to be looked up to:
cast in steel, garments
streaming, paired
as in dance.
They bestride
material future.
The borne-on-high
hammer and sickle
take them out of themselves,
like haloes on saints
in a jettisoned past.
They need no inner life.
The rift can’t be bridged
to where on its swastika perch
the eagle of the Reich
humps and stares them out,
gaze kitsch-mystic:
Albert Speer’s climax
to his beefcake palace.
(Spain’s, beside these, just
a sideshow, Republic already
half-lost, half-legend:
contortive Picasso
in pride of place).
I miss out on the Great Abdication,
make it in time for the Duke and his Duchess
feted by Herr Hitler.
Doesn’t he just know
what tunes to play on embitterment!
His stormtroopers, gloves white as snow,
salute them royally, bayonets
upthrust, helmets smooth
as phallus-tips.
From global war to global warming.
Here’s washing on lines, good drying weather,
sun-basted roofs, parched leaves gossiping ....
a handful of snaps from that summer I was born.
Grandfather - out for the day
in front of some washed-out seascape -
flat cap worn with a swagger,
jacket loosed, blazoned watchchain.
Looks unfazed by events.
Unconcerned with change.
Page(s) 28-29
magazine list
- Features
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- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
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- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
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- Global Tapestry
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- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
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- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
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- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
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- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
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- Quarto
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- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
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- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
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- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
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- Yellow Crane, The