Poems without images?Poems with Verbal Images
Here are two poems from a sequence I am still writing in the voices of the clothes worn by well-known women. The poem that’s still waiting to be written is about Helen Monro, a glass artist whose wedding dress was made of glass. Isadora Duncan’s Scarf 1927 Red, my colour and hers, to swirl through the day, to dance through the night, body and scarf wound as one. Red for the blood of her children left in the car, brake forgotten- boy, girl and nanny rolled into the Seine. Red for her lover, Yesenin, his poems, the Soviet flag. And today she pulls me over her shoulders, winds me close about her neck till I whip out into the wind, catch the spokes of the wheel, and round and round I reel her from her passenger seat, into the air, and limp we lie entwined as lovers on the Promenade des Anglais. |
Diana’s Dresses
Once we had a princess in our grip, slipped off her shoulders, clung round her hips, fell to the floor. One or two of us had the luck to shiver in the clasp of famous men, Travolta, an American president and then of course the pressure of Charles’ hand always ready to re-arrange the way we were. We don’t forget Diana, the men, the events and our designers live on in every cut and seam, in every gathering and soft-light shimmer, though our afterlife is rather tame. We are mostly glass-cased on headless dummies: we yearn |
From 'Things of Substance'
A Rough Guide to Hospitals of the World
University of Moscow Medical School 1986
Welcome to Moscow, our great city, our prestigious university
here in medical centre we can show you wonders of Soviet Medicine,
everything good for citizens, good for world.
Come this way, this is specimens room, forward, please.
We have pickled brains of important heroes, all in jars.
These brains have done many inventions, many theories,
mathematical, astronomical, psychological, many more.
And over here we have small pieces of human body
but people very famous, have done big steps in our country,
and in universe, in space-travel. Please consider little jar here,
man very great in science of space. Comrades, this little piece
of human anatomy, this Gargarin’s appendix.
A Rough Guide to Hospitals of the World
University of Moscow Medical School 1986
Welcome to Moscow, our great city, our prestigious university
here in medical centre we can show you wonders of Soviet Medicine,
everything good for citizens, good for world.
Come this way, this is specimens room, forward, please.
We have pickled brains of important heroes, all in jars.
These brains have done many inventions, many theories,
mathematical, astronomical, psychological, many more.
And over here we have small pieces of human body
but people very famous, have done big steps in our country,
and in universe, in space-travel. Please consider little jar here,
man very great in science of space. Comrades, this little piece
of human anatomy, this Gargarin’s appendix.