soundofmanywaters

Highland Fling, Michelangelo [An ekphrastic poem is one inspired by another work of art, for example Keats and his Grecian Urn or Auden, in his Musee des Beaux Arts, by the works of Brueghel.] Highland Fling You are not dancing but      Floating Over crossed Scottish swords      Flashing Defiance at gravity      Flouting The drag of mortality      Freeing Your heart from its heaviness      Flaunting The reward of your training      Flying In the gale of the spirit      Flaming Heart, face and hands skyward      Flinging. Your dance is ending, the pipes are      Falling Silent, you rejoin the world of the      Floundering And become again my dad.      Fleeting My glimpse of your sky-flung soul. My dad was a Highland dancer and a very good one, so much so that he became a judge at various Highland gatherings, including the mos...

Bottom, A New Orpheus, The Clown Bottom I hope that others look on me as deep, Witty, perhaps, serene and debonair: But I’m known by the company I keep And I’ve got you behind me everywhere. Others I try to approach with dignity To give a good impression to their mind: I turn to go, another view of me Presents – yours is the face I leave behind. My softest paper shows consideration, I faithfully transport you to the loo: Why must you interrupt my conversation And air what hardly passes for your view? Prelates and professors, potentates, Please don’t look down on me for my poor bottom: Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and William Gates, And Taylor Swift - you all know you’ve got ‘em. Almighty Lord, that has made all things well, You know the secrets that we try to hide. You know it’s bad for us when egos swell: You gave us bottoms to bring down our pride. A New Orpheus The Muse is a flighty bird and proud Who stays half hidden in her high cloud, Will not flit down and talk to those Who would be ...

SoundofManyWaters Collection 9: Relating Furies and Gorgons, Bone of my Bone, Semaphore, Bearing the Image     Furies and Gorgons   Blusterless Agamemnon The wind gone from your sails Buy a fair breeze With your daughter’s blood And get a hurricane With talons in it.   Medusa rises from the abyss With serpents rising from her hair Each slithering shape gazing With the face of the oppressed: Despised daughters, belittled Sisters, grieving mothers, Abandoned widows and Rejected lovers.   Quick, Perseus! Raise your mirror before their stares Strike home into your stony heart.     Semaphore   Somewhere we lost the knowing of each other We made an image, stuck it on a shelf. Now you are left so many lies to smother And I must labour on to lose myself.   Now mountains rise between us, gaunt and high And no-one knows what we are waiting for. Who will be first to scale them,...