This poem was spurred by email exchanges among Liliane Lijn, Gerard Bellaart, and myself. It takes phrases from them and from the three sources noted below. The impulse to compose it arose from this blogpost.
Drawing by Sinclair Beiles [Courtesy G. Bellaart]
MUSE
In the sawdust heart
of a puppet world,
where haughty Celia
ingloriously sits,
her failed prophecy
is buried by time,
perverted by history,
displaced and forgot
like a lost memorial
to the living dark.
Oh yes, Celia shits,
the summit of it all,
watered by the kind
reverence of the blind.
–JH
Via Cooke/Hazlitt/Swift
It is published in a first edition limited to 36 copies and may be ordered here.
Spontaneous like this is usually great. Only thinking yesterday – is Pope too tough for our times?
Topicality aside, perhaps the high-gloss finish of Pope’s 18th-century polish shines too much?