Party Piece

  He said:
'Let's stay here
Now this place has emptied
& make gentle pornography with one another,
While the partygoers go out
& the dawn creeps in,
Like a stranger.

Let us not hesitate
Over what we know
Or over how cold this place has become,
But let's unclip our minds
And let tumble free
The mad, mangled crocodiles of love.'

So they did,
Right there among the woodbines and guinness stains,
And later he caught a bus and she a train
And all there was between them then
was rain.

Had I the heavens embroidered cloth

This is probably the most amazing art work I have ever encountered. I wish I'd heard of it sooner so I could have actually gone and experienced it.

Peace Camp 2012, part of the London Festival, comprises a gathering of tents situated at various coastal areas in England. At dusk "they start to glow, pulsating with a pinkish light. If you walk among them, you begin to hear – above the batter of waves on rock – a fragmentary soundscape of poems about love, snatches of Sappho, Sophocles and Shakespeare." (from the Guardian website)

Doesn't it look breathtaking? Read more here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jul/20/artists-british-coastline-poetry-island

Nursery Tale

All I remember is
The horseman, the moonlit hedges,
The hoofbeats shut suddenly in the yard,
The hand finding the door unbarred:
And I recall the room where he was brought,
Hung black and candlelit; a sort
Of meal laid out in mockery; for though
His place was set, there was no more
Than one unpolished pewter dish, that bore
The battered carcase of a carrion crow.

So every journey that I make
Leads me, as in the story he was led,
To some new ambush, to some fresh mistake:
So every journey I begin foretells
A weariness of daybreak, spread
With carrion kisses, carrion farewells.

Poetry, please

"Morning has spread again

 Through every street, 

And we are strange again;

 For should we meet 

How can I tell you that 

Last night you came 

Unbidden, in a dream? 

And how forget 

That we had worn down love good-humouredly, 

Talking in fits and starts 

As friends, as they will be 

Who have let passion die within their hearts. 

Now, watching the red east expand, 

I wonder love can have already set 

In dreams, when we’ve not met 

More times than I can number on one hand." 

— Philip Larkin