Poems in response to paintings by Peter Rodulfo
Lily Pool
The Round Pool
by
Wendy Cope
You watch yourself. You watch the watcher too –
A ghostly figure on the garden wall.
And one of you is her, and one is you,
If either one of you exists at all.
How strange to be the one behind a face,
To have a name and know that it is yours,
To be in this particular green place,
To see a snail advance, to see it pause.
You sit quite still and wonder when you’ll go.
It could be now. Or now. Or now. You stay.
Who’s making up the plot? You’ll never know.
Minute after minute swims away.
Published in "If I don`t know" by Faber and Faber
also in "Two cures for love. selected poems", published by Faber and Faber
by
Wendy Cope
You watch yourself. You watch the watcher too –
A ghostly figure on the garden wall.
And one of you is her, and one is you,
If either one of you exists at all.
How strange to be the one behind a face,
To have a name and know that it is yours,
To be in this particular green place,
To see a snail advance, to see it pause.
You sit quite still and wonder when you’ll go.
It could be now. Or now. Or now. You stay.
Who’s making up the plot? You’ll never know.
Minute after minute swims away.
Published in "If I don`t know" by Faber and Faber
also in "Two cures for love. selected poems", published by Faber and Faber
Keeping Warm
Keeping Warm by Richard Basset
There you are
I see you are again
walking beside the right bank
of our river
the only one we both know
perhaps you are looking for me
And you follow the firm path formed
so colourfully beneath star or moon
down from the crashing heights to the crescent sea
while scale and fur, the host of all journeys
shade and play with your brief incandescent footprint
I wait for you on this fossil coast
where giants rocked the earth
gods ripped and charged the air
heedless of our future advent
and of their own short time there
Since when, some ancient jolly mariner saint
like us thankful of the shelter
danced on deck another conquest
before some lingering ghost
too tired to resist
but knows that sanctuary relents to sanctuary
churches appear upon temple towers
long ago laid low
and that again together we may dream
each warmly beside love.
There you are
I see you are again
walking beside the right bank
of our river
the only one we both know
perhaps you are looking for me
And you follow the firm path formed
so colourfully beneath star or moon
down from the crashing heights to the crescent sea
while scale and fur, the host of all journeys
shade and play with your brief incandescent footprint
I wait for you on this fossil coast
where giants rocked the earth
gods ripped and charged the air
heedless of our future advent
and of their own short time there
Since when, some ancient jolly mariner saint
like us thankful of the shelter
danced on deck another conquest
before some lingering ghost
too tired to resist
but knows that sanctuary relents to sanctuary
churches appear upon temple towers
long ago laid low
and that again together we may dream
each warmly beside love.
Secret Garden
- The Man Who Wouldn't Share His Garden with a Wolf
by
Sophie Hannah
I try to keep my cool-
difficult when the thieving
bastard has got his paws inside my pool,
tail on the grass,and shows no sign of leaving.
I don't know what the fool
thinks he's achieving.
He calls himself my friend. - The place, he calls exquisite.
Creep. Just a while, he said. So, to extend
that while to permanence is friendly is it?
A visit with no end
is not a visit.
Which would be more unkind,
to draw a line, restrict him
to one half of the garden, or to find
a pretext upon which I could evict him.
To have him off my mind,
even inflict him
on somebody I hate-
one of the grin and bear it
brigade, who almost pushed him through my gate, - who now sit back and murmer how unfair it
- is for a man of great
wealth not to share it.
Good guilt-inducing trick,
but false, since I would harden
my heart, if i was poor,over a brick.
You heard me. Never mind I beg your pardon.
Get the ungrateful prick
out of my garden.
Published in 'Marrying the Ugly Millionaire' - New and collected poems
Carcanet 2015
