‘Quite Frankly’   (from Petrarch  Canzoniere  1 - 9)

1

if you can read in the afterglow

of all the friction I connived in

escaping to the fairground so very young

& so variously insane

I hope you’ll recognise a few shapes

if only by the state of the trellis

& that pain in the stomach

which is mainly knots in my convention

I don’t blame them for crossing the street

when I come trudging down the contents page

I’d do it myself & head for the coconut shy

but it’s now long gone & the hole hurts

the most intoxicating music of the fair at night

reduced to diesel fumes & cracked syringes

2

to get me back for backing away

for ever love slid a needle in my vein

when the big wheel had stopped

& I was staring out towards Skegness

I thought I was safe from feeling

or seeing stuff that wasn’t there

but cadmium lightning hurtled

through the fuse that I’d become

bundled  onto the hovercraft of love

I never had a chance 

to get my boots back on the ground

reconnect my edges

zip up & adopt my old position

as po-faced sentry of the self

7

anything of value has been banished

by a committee of the lazy

the greedy & the habitually thick

so where do we go from here?

these days it’s hard to even see the stars

which once offered a perspective on our lives

now anyone dedicated to poetry

is awarded the status of freak

you only work for poetry & love?

do it in rags in that caravan then

& raise a glass of cold water to art

you’ll walk this road alone my friend

you know that as well as I do

well it’s too late to turn back now

8

down in the valley where renewed

genetic bonding allows individuality

the subject strode through whispered

sleep & blue insomnia

we pottered in the foothills preparing

a few cannelloni & speeches

without expecting anything worse

than the odd power cut or drizzle

but eviction from such freedom

into this harsh internment

leaves just one escape & that’s death

a kind of vengeance by one side

of the mind against the other

which finds itself chained to love

9

when the local star that gives us time

returns to the cosmic fields of the Bull

virtue descends from the stars’ horny fires

cramming the  world with dense new colour

& not just the skin  (the streams

& hills in hungry bloom)   but also

in the dark places where I predict

an unpremeditated riot

until this bag bulges with outcomes

& although she is my local star

shining the bloody I-light right inside me

creating thought life & English-lit

whether she guides or ignores it all

my inner dream of spring’s still ice

Copyright © Peter Hughes, 2009