Outside the Ibis
a bored Monday night, listless
winds up for a fight.
Track-suit div leads with his
right,
swings a haymaker, misses.
iv. 2020
NOT BUYING IN
No PPE your voice to mask.
And should you question, they will say
that ‘now is not the time to ask’
how duty to protect lost track
of plague we knew would come one
day.
Here’s PPE, your voice to mask.
Where are the tests and staff we lack?
Is there oxygen enough to share?
No, now is not the time to ask.
Stay home and ‘take it on the chin’,
watching appalled from your
armchair
with PPE your voice to mask.
Be in the herd, get daily
spin.
Let clapping cover up the lies,
for now is not the time to ask.
What is the plan to be supplied?
How many more must breathless die?
Though PPE our voice may mask,
it’s now – not later – time to ask.
iv. 2020
THE PUPIL’S EYE
My red chalk poised to make its mark,
I pause. Steady this shaking hand.
Full well I know the master’s wish
to entrust an image of himself.
Perhaps his vanity is earned.
This student heart desires to show
there’s depth to read, between the lines
I seek to trace from face to page.
“Why does the mind see such design
more clear in dreams than when awake?”
‘Own the skill’, da Vinci urges,
‘every clean sheet needs a drawing’.
A nose in profile becomes stiff
as movement is the source of life,
shadow the means to disclose form.
Once graceful ringlets now hang lank,
the curl and weight of strands unsprung.
That beard is newly fashionable,
then and now. Under its veneer,
his yearning features are undimmed.
Melzi may fix those rheumy eyes
but cannot match the restless thoughts
behind, from which I’ve learned so much.
Framed by gift of my memento,
they shape the world’s perspective still.
ix. 2019 – iv. and x. 2020
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