Five Poems by Byron Beynon

 

 

WOMAN IN AN ARCH OF TREES 

 

I have walked a path

that resembles the way she goes,

time's leafy screens

with those dark trees

arched closer straining to hear

words which are said

but never recalled

on a journey such as this;

I see her now

about to wave,

coming towards me,

gentle proof

that small windows of dappled light

still open to guide the mind. 

 

 

AT PÈRE LACHAISE 

 

Here the famous guests are scattered

in funerary plots and calculated divisions,

with sculpture, some reminding me of sentry-boxes,

ready and made to accommodate whole families.

During the hour or more

I stayed among the dead

I found the black and polished grave of Proust,

his name remembered in time and letters.

I searched for Balzac, Bizet,

and the young American

Jim Morrison of the Doors.

Blind men! But who's to say?

One by one the shadows disappeared.

At 89e Div 1-2 I saw

graffiti on Epstein's monument

to Oscar Wilde,

Oscar who? Someone had scrawled

in dark paint.

A gardener pointed

to Piaf's place,

smothered in flowers and notes,

as children from a school party

sketched Chopin's marble face.

Nobody could disturb them,

they had completed their cycle

in a city touched by sunshine and dust,

where unknown visitors leave bouquets,

vulnerable petals that see in the light. 

 

 

THE MARBLE TOWER, ATHENS 

 

An afternoon stirring memory

beside the marble tower of the winds.

I gaze at an architect’s imagination,

scattered flowers,

the urn chiselled with water

flowing from a precursor in history,

a solid octagonal craft

taking flight towards

the ebullient light,

this survivor from antiquity

displaying a calm dignity,

the sprawling compass-beats etched

within this city’s congested heart. 

 

 

THE COMPASS 

 

I think of Keats wearing an open collar

fashionably turned down,

the black ribbon

round a bare neck,

his fresh, shy nerves

tapping against a windowpane

in a room of quiet intensity

and free movement.

In the early hours of an October morning

he sealed a letter,

dispatched a sonnet

to a breakfast table,

the anticipation conceived.

Seeing the compass of words

he gathered from experience,

moods captured from natural objects,

the heavily marked book

an exorcism for disappointments,

the murmurs rightly used. 

 

 

THE BOY WITH A FEATHER 

 

The boy has found a feather

to play with,

a new toy for imagination's

threshold

he is introduced to science,

gravity captured

before the fall

sticks to the memory,

bold and clear

in slow motion

it meets the invisible ground

without sound,

only the child's sweet breath

recalls that never again

will there be such innocence.

Byron Beynon's work has recently appeared in the anthologies Winter in America - Again (Carbonation Press) and The Polaris Trilogy (Brick Street Poetry, Inc). Collections include Cuffs (Rack Press), The Echoing Coastline (Agenda) and Where Shadows Stir (The Seventh Quarry Press).