Written by
Robert Louis Stevenson |
BEHOLD, as goblins dark of mien
And portly tyrants dyed with crime
Change, in the transformation scene,
At Christmas, in the pantomime,
Instanter, at the prompter's cough,
The fairy bonnets them, and they
Throw their abhorred carbuncles off
And blossom like the flowers in May.
- So mankind, to angelic eyes,
So, through the scenes of life below,
In life's ironical disguise,
A travesty of man, ye go:
But fear not: ere the curtain fall,
Death in the transformation scene
Steps forward from her pedestal,
Apparent, as the fairy Queen;
And coming, frees you in a trice
From all your lendings - lust of fame,
Ungainly virtue, ugly vice,
Terror and tyranny and shame.
So each, at last himself, for good
In that dear country lays him down,
At last beloved and understood
And pure in feature and renown.
|
Written by
Laura Riding Jackson |
Across a continent imaginary
Because it cannot be discovered now
Upon this fully apprehended planet—
No more applicants considered,
Alas, alas—
Ran an animal unzoological,
Without a fate, without a fact,
Its private history intact
Against the travesty
Of an anatomy.
Not visible not invisible,
Removed by dayless night,
Did it ever fly its ground
Out of fancy into light,
Into space to replace
Its unwritable decease?
Ah, the minutes twinkle in and out
And in and out come and go
One by one, none by none,
What we know, what we don't know.
|
Written by
Obi Nwakanma |
Marrakech: the grey hairs of
Atlas, streaks of the light of years,
like truth accompanied by a bodyguard.
It is not war: the fast tumble
is no war, Nadia.
Two pendants, each of hearts, and
the silvery lock leashed unto time;
Is no war: but the travesty of distance,
And this moment, a full breast glistening
out of the moon, the darkened streets
and hooded, like the lawless,
stranger or wayfarer:
It is the pod streaking with milk
smelt so close, it vanishes,
like the gecko abandoning her tail.
|