When the instrument sings and the dance begins…the words are always there…
When the instrument sings and the dance begins…and the words are always there…
Vertigo
“How often, I thought to myself, had I lain thus in a hotel room, in Vienna or Frankfurt or Brussels, with my hands clasped under my head, listening not to the stillness, as in Venice, but to the roar of the traffic, with a mounting sense of panic. That then, I thought on such occasions, is the new ocean. Ceaselessly, in great surges, the waves roll in over the length and breadth of our cities, rising higher and higher, breaking in a kind of frenzy when the roar reaches its peak and then discharging across the stones and asphalt even as the next onrush is being released from where it was held by traffic lights. For some time now I have been convinced that it is out of this din that the life is being born which will come after us and will spell our gradual destruction, just as we have been gradually destroying what was there long before us.”
- G. Sebald Vertigo. P63
Storm Song of the Hawthorn
Storm song of the Hawthorn
Gales come and gales blow
Its winter out on the hill
Gales come and gales go
Streams and rivers filled
The land flooded and full
Rainwater has nowhere to flow
And we hope for the lull
But still the storms blow.
And the Hawthorn still sings
Tribute to Astrid Lindgren’s “The Fox and the Tomten”.
©robcullenfebruary2020.
.winter acrostic. — sonja benskin mesher
when the sky chills, we move inside the house nesting, curling in feather bedding till darker days end robbing our solitary muse
The Travelling Musical Bears
Paola Deffendi is still waiting.
Paola Deffendi is still waiting.
Paola Deffendi is waiting.
Giulio Regeni her son lies buried under a line of cypress trees.
her son’s gravestone is just a plain marble slab.
unadorned except for flowers, devotional candles and a small photograph
his face open and earnest.
Paola Deffendi is waiting.
‘It’s all over the happiness of our family was so short.’’
she waits for justice to be done and for truth to be told.
Veritas for Giulio Regeni.
and love will triumph, love for a child will not be out done.
his face open and earnest.
Paola Deffendi is waiting.
Nagy said – ‘‘We will just have to wait. Inshallah, something will come of it.’’
And the secrecy of darkness enfolds always playing for time,
hoping people will forget, and we and the world will stop watching.
and Giulio Regeni lies buried under a line of cypress trees
his gravestone a plain marble slab.
Paola Deffendi is waiting.
for the real truth and not the convenient truth to be revealed
those at the top In Egypt know – they hide secrets in the darkness of their hearts
Giulio Regini’s broken and violated body was left propped up.
Waiting to be found. But they’d found it already
It was in plain view. And they knew, they knew.
Paola Deffendi is waiting.
A mother honours the child she brought into this world,
the son she loved and watched as any mother would.
A child who grew into manhood with brilliance and compassion,
and the intense inquisitiveness that showed his humanity,
and now Giulio Regeni lies buried under a line of cypress trees.
“But we will not stop until we find an answer. We owe it to his mother.”
©RobCullen2017
Onward/Ymlaen – #Resist
Mapped Edge
Pleased to hear that my work has been published in the Field edition of the online arts magazine The Learned Pig…
Winter Solstice
Celfypridd 