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The Gower Memorial, by Guy Fletcher

27/9/2016

"Good night sweet Prince/and flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest." –Shakespeare

I stroll by the banks of the Avon
early on a September Sunday,
a lone swan gliding across the river
as hail bounces from a troubled sky
producing a plethora of jumping pools
in water Shakespeare knew well.
The moored barges ever so gently sway
as a cool wind blows on this autumn day.

I reach the Gower Memorial
with Shakespeare's famous figures:
Lady Macbeth and her wild frightening eyes,
Falstaff and Prince Hal with spider web,
its owner oblivious to literature.
I sit down and reflect on the stone wall,
into the pages of his plays I fall:

"Divinity of hell," I imagine Iago
and the blood on the hands of Macbeth
as flowers wave and I wonder
if the great man's ghost wanders here
as famous lines formed in his agile mind.
The sun breaks through, stars fall in the river
and I say goodbye to Lady Macbeth
whose statue will stand long after my death.

The Atheist, by Ian Fletcher

27/9/2016

Religion seems to him
the most original of sins
that he must rail against
with a preacher’s zeal.

Jesus Christ, the Buddha
and Muhammad are devils
that deceive the human race
with their false hopes of grace.

Yet even for an unbeliever
like me, churches, mosques
and temples seem refuges
from such godless men as he.

With nothing to fill the void
that this atheist bequeaths me
I deem myself doubly cursed
to live with him in this universe.

A Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy, by Guy Fletcher

22/9/2016

She was plucked from the mean streets of Southwark,
immortal as doomed Ophelia
but when Lizzie Siddal lay in that cold tub
she must have empathised with her:
pale, beautiful and feigning death
with so much time to reflect
on the bruises reigning down on her soul
with such melancholia in control.

She fell in love with the painter Rossetti,
an Adonis once before alcohol and drugs
ravaged his body and polluted his mind,
a tragic Victorian romance
and after the heartbreak of a stillborn child,
together with Rossetti's roving eye
she left the horrors of the mortal stage
with laudanum, thirty-two years of age.

In the painting "Regina Cordium"
Lizzie's copper locks fall over a milky neck
with the saddest eyes I've ever seen.
The grief-stricken artist buried his poems
with his lover but years later
infamously reclaimed them from the grave of
the Pre-Raphaelite superstar who lies
in Shakespeare's water with sightless eyes.

Corner, by Siobhan Luff

20/9/2016

The bedsheets off the corner,
It always angers her
It’s only become that through the tossing and turning,
Only becoming this through the lies and hurting.
The misplaced partnership, we weren’t ready for,
And this old bed, we can’t afford much more.
Our wedlock baby, now her distance lately,
Residing in a place that will always blame me.

“why’s daddy on the sofa?”
What breakfast of lies will you tell her?

“They’re off the corner! Fix it like its new”
“Fix it forever, before I quit you”

“They’re off the corner”, shards through my head.
Burn them all. Ablaze but dead.

Cathays Park, Cardiff On A Fine September Morning, by Guy Fletcher

16/9/2016

A man in a suit reflects on a park bench
before fighting against the world again
as butterflies flutter on flowerbeds,
a rainbow of colours entrancing my eyes:
yellow, pink, red and violet as well.
Lord Aberdare looks on, face unchanging
but I recall a time here long ago
strolling with my love in the rare deep snow

but now it's a warm September morning
and dew shines as if stars have fallen
in the night onto the soft verdant carpet.
But revellers have scattered cans of lager
next to the columns of the War memorial,
a little scar but not enough
to ruin a truly exquisite view
in Cathays Park...under a sky of blue.

The Skull, by Guy Fletcher

10/9/2016

They discovered a woman's skull
in a field next to the village
carbon dating it back to many centuries before.
She departed this earth at an early age,
I speculate whether she bore children
who wept with grief on a star-filled
medieval night. What was her name?
I wonder if the long dead woman came

to the Norman church where on this Sunday
the choir sings as angels descend.
I picture a melancholy ghost drifting
down the village streets now choked with cars
and hope she experienced moments of joy
in an era when life was brief and brutal,
skull molested after so many years
but for her there is no more pain or tears.

Beggar, by Ian Fletcher

10/9/2016

Strolling along
Taichung’s streets
at night
carrying
nothing
but my anxieties
which are blown away
by the evening breeze
along this pleasant avenue
lined with trees
I see him
waiting
patiently
eyes cast down
cross-legged
on the sidewalk
a bedraggled Buddha
next to the footbridge
over the river
where the crowds
play Pokemon Go.

His begging bowl
empty
he is ignored
as they ignore
the Holy One.

On The East Bank Of The River Han, by Ian Fletcher

5/9/2016

(Photo by the author)

Heading out from the school
where I instruct the young
of this tropical land I cross
over the road which skirts
the east bank of the River Han.

River? To me this afternoon
it seems more like a stream
its waters severely depleted
by the mid-summer drought.

This will change when autumn
rains, tempests and typhoons
will swell this river once again
to flood the great alluvial plain.

But not today as I watch the egrets
hunt lazily in the limpid shallows
replete with fish, the languid current
seeming to carry my troubles away.

My mind thus briefly succumbs
to this quiet river’s summer spell
almost beguiled by the peaceful
tranquility of this noonday scene.

Yet I know
as the birds do not know
that the storms will come.

Poetry

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