Roy Fuller
Variations
For John Lehmann
According to a TLS review
Franck ‘led an uneventful life . . . was not . . .
Prolific’. Might have been describing me.
The window frames a leggy yellow rose.
I hurry out to rescue drowning bees.
The bedside notebook yields its gibberish.
Franck: many boring bars; a schmaltzy tune;
Arguably, wit and singularity
Confined to the Variations symphoniques.
Not bad to be remembered even thus.
Each decade trendy geniuses arise;
Non-geniuses nearer to oblivion.
Ancients on benches, crumbling bread for birds —
It’s they I should be with! Don’t mind the young
Doing what’s daring: I just want to think it.
The games of human love are infantile
Admittedly: my tragi-comedy
Is seeing them as puerile as well.
Making the relative allowances,
You’re not, dear friend, as antique as your dog.
I can’t yet pity you for walking slow
Or coughing when you rise to welcome me.
As for your fifty years’ affair with iambs,
I envy it. No cause for faithlessness.
Creation seems continuous, looking back;
Yet we both know how random and how frail
The hours that make the opus numbers up.
I wish your study windows cloches for flowers . . .
More and more sweetness in your neighbours’ hives . . .
Dreaming recalled and always metrical!
Page(s) 27-28
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