Long Rowley Poems

An Excelente Balade of Charitie (“An Excellent Ballad of Charity”)
by Thomas Chatterton, age 17
modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch

As wroten bie the goode Prieste
Thomas Rowley 1464

In Virgynë the swelt'ring sun grew keen,
Then hot upon the meadows...

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Song from Aella: Under the Willow Tree, or, Minstrel's Song
by Thomas Chatterton, age 17 or younger
modernization/translation by Michael R. Burch

MYNSTRELLES SONGE ("MINSTREL'S SONG")

O! sing unto my roundelay,
O! drop the briny tear with me,
Dance no more...

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Europe was frozen in a tide of hate
The genius Jew was being persecuted
Bound to the intransigence of fate
His violin played the tunes they executed
Now it was time to think as they electrocuted
The hopes of young...

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NO  TEA  PARTY

The lid is rising on the kettle’s song,
Likewise my energy wastes itself in air,
Don’t call me when the tea’s made, I’ll be gone.

I left my true self with your vulgar throng
Now...

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THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A DAME –
and there is no dame like a building society or a bank!

There may be nothing like me, but I assure you
the world would have gone to hell but for...

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DEMETER AT THE CHINESE OPERA


So, I invited you to the Chinese Opera impulsively
Thinking of masks and dragons and triumphant mystery
I though it was time we threw off our coats
Of mourning, you for your  daughter

Stopping...

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FOR MARY MAGDALENE

Between necessity and freedom I was crucified
Perceiving Himself endlessly on the cross
Yet aware, as an onlooker, petrified
My vision that never was, would be His loss.

I mimed too, as they hammered in the nails
Once...

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FOR SUSANNE 

I came in search of skill and I found virtue
In your climb up the stairs you were neat and clear
Making no excuse for the way he hurt you
But you cling to reality with...

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DAMSEL CAUSING DISTRESS


The knight errant sent for me, but I’ve gone missing
For three days now, while he’s composed a ditty:
In the tide of feminism I still haven’t given up kissing
Being what is termed fatalistically pretty...

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ON HIS BIRTHDAY
from Anne Donne to her husband John – supposing she went on record..

Five senses have we, but just one soul
I take you part by part, and then the whole
Your fingertips begin at shadow’s...

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BROKEN FLOWERS
i.m. Ann, my sister 1947 – 1997)

Heads of fine purple strewn across cement
And yellowness heaped up in an airless room –
Travesties to which your heart’s golden fire-dust
Is an increment on pain.  You asked
If...

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THE POET MEETS THE JOURNO

All right, so I introduced you to each other,
She, sotto voce, with sweet piercing alter
Ego and intransigent integral and inviolate
Laws, you with your collection of newspaper
Cuttings of riots, strikes, and the...

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MUST   I  CALL YOU.....AGAIN?

Must I call you again, onlooker at my hurt,
Talking by the window, an inscape of wrecked
Solitude,  impugned bad manners, and the curt
Commerce of refusal.  Your blameless, decked

Hand...

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BETTER HALF

for Roger and Tessa 

I feel his presence as if he stood before me
My thoughts are tea-leaves only he can read
A brain scan shows I want him to adore me
While my heart shows for...

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THE TOKEN POETRY EDITOR

Sexless, unloved, this poem tycoon
Reads the heart’s treasures as the brain's boon,
And riven with erudition, explores the spaces
Where uninvited couplets kill the places

With talk of probity and probability.
This mortgaged toad of honesty...

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THE TEMPLE PROSTITUTE

The God came  to me in the guise of a stranger
His gold body scent was of great sublimity 
His arms were marble pillars,  and his embrace
Melted the whole world on my...

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THE MAD SECRETARY

Hunched over the computer, I am  mystical,
With mental white gloves and a karate belt - 
A daylight cursor, but on my bicycle,
A word and energy transformer, a flickering Celt.

Such metaphysics I can...

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JADE
by Rosemarie Rowley

	
I knew you fainthearted what side you were on
When you talked of social reality: not Jesus at the well
With the Samaritan woman, or the invisible loss of power
Which halts her speech and causes...

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DEMI-MONDAINE


You belong in silhouette to the dream’s theft
And weft with paid desire, look all adoring
At the man who’s made your life bereft
Of actual household dreams, he says it’s boring

Fresh linen, dimity and damask blue
Would be...

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ALMOST AN APOLOGY

Sometimes he enchants me with his word
The sea of phrases laps around my feet
His vision hones on truth just as a bird
Seeks its mate to fit a fancy, greet

With the sun each rising...

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WOMAN WRITER

If interviewed on the subject of the sonnet
What man has brought me endless cups of tea?
They’ll say I’ve got a Queen Bee in my bonnet
The male groupies will not type my poems for me.

What...

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THE AMAZON MEETS THE GREEKS

When life was thick with possibility,
Before the written word and the weighing scales,
Your definitions held too much probity
In the rich seamless embroidery of our tales.

Our vanished mystery, which your history sealed
Up...

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THE UNREPENTANT VIRAGO


Named for a man, my treason’s not my own
My tantalising tales tame his temerity
As I cling to the cliff-hanger 
Of my own biopic, my to-be-tested verity
He claims I am inevitable as the ocean
And...

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THE MOON HANKERS 

Though none can comfort me, nor sage, nor oak
Nor heart of bronze made in a silver hoop
With gem encrusted golden rod to poke
Out my eyes in mystery’s final scoop - 

Flanged with...

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LUST IS AS ILL-CONSIDERED A WEED
  AS EVER STOLE SCENT


Rejected in the main as superstition -
A gadfly, I’m alone upon the weed:
A hot cinquefoil brooding on position,
Declared intent of being in need of screed...

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