By Candlelight

I have read somewhere that the birds of fairyland
are white as snow.—W. B. Yeats Where all the trees bear golden flowers,
And all the birds are white;

to Somes

from incarceration, Taunton State Hospital, 1972

gaunt, ugly deformed

broken from the womb, and horribly shriven
at the labor of their forefathers, if you check back

scout around grey before actual time
their sordid brains don’t work right,
pinched men emaciated, piling up railroad ties and highway

xxiv
What is far hence led to the den of making:
Moves unlike wildfire | not so simple-happy
Ploughman hammers ploughshare his durum dentem
Digging the Georgics

Vision loads landscape | lauds Idoto Mater
Bearing up sacrally so graced with bodies
Voids the challenge how far from Igboland great-
Stallioned Argos

Vehemencies minus the ripe arraignment
Clapper this art taken to heart the fiction
What are those harsh cryings astrew the marshes
Weep not to hear them

the spiritual, Platonic old England …
S. T. COLERIDGE, Anima Poetae

‘Your situation’, said Coningsby, looking up the green and silent valley, ‘is absolutely poetic.’
‘I try sometimes to fancy’, said Mr Millbank, with a rather fierce smile, ‘that I am in the New World.’
BENJAMIN DISRAELI, Coningsby

Spotlight a

SCENE ONE: Open-air court in the ancient city of Athens. The accused arrive
and proceed among curses and cries of Death! Death!

SCENE TWO: A jail in the same city, beneath the Acropolis, walls half-eaten by
dampness. On the ground, a miserly straw mat and in the corner,
an earthenware jar of water. On the outside wall, a shadow: the
guard.

SCENE THREE: Constantinople. In the harem of the Holy Place, in candlelight,