#stephen edgar

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Poetic Forms: Ottava Rima

Ottava rima : pentameter lines rhyming abababcc.

The air is drenched with day, but one by one The flowers close on cue, Obedient to the declining sun. Forest and grasses, bush and leaf and stem, They cannot move (and nor, you dream, can you); It is the wind that plays with them. Only the little midges dancing still Against the evening move at will. This tiny swarm still dancing on and on Like something in a net Expanding and contracting, that late swan Towing its wake, a solitary crow Crossing the twilight in its silhouette, The fox proceeding sly and slow: They are small worlds of purpose which infuse The world around with will to choose. An animalcule in a drop of dew— And so diminutive That if the human eye should look clear through That globe there would be nothing there to see— Although it only has a blink to live, Yet in the face of this is free; The oak, in whose vast foliage this dot Hangs from a single leaf, is not. Stephen Edgar, Oswald Spengler Watches the Sunset

Sources: 1 2

[batgovernor]

Weekend read: Stephen Edgar, 'Murray Dreaming'

It’s not the sharks Sliding mere inches from his upturned face Through warps of water where the tunnel arcs Transparent overhead, Their lipless jaws clamped shut, extruding teeth, Their eyes that stare at nothing, like the dead, Staring at him; it’s not the eerie grace Of rays he stood beneath, Gaping at their entranced slow-motion chase That is unending; It’s not the ultra-auditory hum Of ET…

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[batgovernor]

Stephen Edgar, 'Dawn Solo'

First light beside the Murray in Mildura,Which like a drift of mist pervadesThe eucalypt arcades,A pale caesura Dividing night and day. Two, three clear notesTo usher in the dawn are heardFrom a pied butcherbird,A phrase that floats So slowly through the silence-thickened air,Those notes, like globules labouringThrough honey, almost clingAnd linger there. Or is it that the notes themselves…

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[poem-today]

A poem by Stephen Edgar

The Kiss

How can she do this now that it's all changed, Present her lips to kiss As though that known face were the same as this From which you've been estranged? Of course it is. Here, now? Or then and there? How can she sit down in her cloud of hair And watch you as though you were someone else? You are, of course, to her. You were this rendezvous's commissioner And nobody compels Your self-distressed attendance here but you. So watch her do as only she can do. She lifts her left hand to her left earlobe And tugs the earring, slides The hook half out and rubs at it and glides It in, as its purple globe Swings back and forth to tantalize your sight. Soon she will do the same thing with the right. A silver bracelet rides along one arm Or settles at the wrist, And lest adornment should seem prejudiced The other has its charm As well, made somehow perfect by the dent That mars the curve of its encirclement. And those two combs holding her hair in place, Two combs of tortoiseshell-- And when she took them out, oh how it fell At night around her face, Which she would lift to you and shut her eyes, That beauty come to seem beauty's disguise, And whether by desire or candlelight, Her skin took on a glow, An alabaster lucency, and so She leant back to invite Your open-mouthed assent. And you would hold That pose like two Klimt lovers cloaked in gold. And that first night you slid the purple shift Over her shoulders and Peeled gently downwards, leaving her to stand In Aphrodite's gift, And sinking with her garment to the floor, Made moist the shadowed fold you knelt before. ​How can she do this now that you're estranged, Stand in her cloud of hair As though she were the same, though well aware That everything is changed (Of course she is), presenting for your kiss The mouth that was the mouth that is not this.

Stephen Edgar

More poems by Stephen Edgar are available on the Clive James site.

[jshoulson]

Today’s Poem

The Menger Sponge --Stephen Edger

God made everything out of nothing; but the nothing shows through —Paul Valéry

Lost from all angles but the sun’s, This woken morning, It clicks its brilliance into place at once, If you follow the fall of light— A spider web, head-high, adorning The woodshed’s entrance like a sheet Of gold-shot fabric, metal-tight, That, even so, one handswipe could delete, Collapsing all That spacious architecture to a tacky ball.

It brings to mind the mathematician’s Monstrous idea, The Menger sponge, where infinite excisions Out of a solid cube delete Its substance while its form stays clear: The central ninth is cut from a square; Eight smaller squares remain; repeat For each; and so on with this lattice of air: A formula For zero volume, infinite surface area.

Enough. The estuary’s slung Like gold-shot cloth Over a gulf of shifting airs. Among Cloud-drifts of beaten eggwhite floats, As though confected of such froth, The mountain. Like a Chinese screen, The fabric of the view devotes Almost all blankness to this hanging scene, This one handsweep Of water, creased like the cheek of someone roused from sleep.

[jshoulson]

Today’s Poem

Oswald Spengler Watches the Sunset --Stephen Edgar

The air is drenched with day, but one by one The flowers close on cue, Obedient to the declining sun. Forest and grasses, bush and leaf and stem, They cannot move (and nor, you dream, can you); It is the wind that plays with them. Only the little midges dancing still Against the evening move at will.

This tiny swarm still dancing on and on Like something in a net Expanding and contracting, that late swan Towing its wake, a solitary crow Crossing the twilight in its silhouette, The fox proceeding sly and slow: They are small worlds of purpose which infuse The world around with will to choose.

An animalcule in a drop of dew— And so diminutive That if the human eye should look clear through That globe there would be nothing there to see— Although it only has a blink to live, Yet in the face of this is free; The oak, in whose vast foliage this dot Hangs from a single leaf, is not.

[spasticalactica]

It's midnight now and sounds like midnight then, The words like distant stars that faintly grace                     The all-pervading dark of space,                     But not meant for the world of men.                                        It's not what we forget But what was never known we most regret Discovery of. Checking one last cassette Among my old unlabelled discards, few Of which reward the playing, I find you. Some years after her death, but years ago, Hearing Gwen's voice recite "Suburban Sonnet,"                     At first we could not focus on it,                     So jolted that the radio                                        Should casually exhume From our shared memory the woman whom We knew and make her present in the room, As though in flesh, surprised to find that she Had earned this further immortality. Who ever thought they would not hear the dead? Who ever thought that they could quarantine                     Those who are not, who once had been?                     At that old station on North Head                                        Inmates still tread the boards, Or something does; equipment there records The voices in the dormitories and wards, Although it's years abandoned. Undeleted, What happened is embedded and repeated, Or so they say. And that would not faze you Who always claimed events could not escape                     Their scenes, recorded as on tape                     In matter and played back anew                                        To anyone attuned To that stored energy, that psychic wound. You said you heard the presence which oppugned Your trespass on its lasting sole occasion In your lost house. I scarcely need persuasion, So simple is this case. Here in the dark I listen, tensing in distress, to each                     Uncertain fragment of your speech,                     Each desolate, half-drunk remark                                        You uttered unaware That this cassette was running and would share Far in the useless future your despair With one who can do nothing but avow You spoke from midnight, and it's midnight now.

STEPHEN EDGAR, Nocturnal