fergushamiltonallen

SOUTHERN OCEAN

2009-09-24T06:09:00.000-07:00

Force ten antarctic gales are shrieking

And tearing the crests off giant waves

While leopard seals are down there treading water,

Alert for anything alive and vulnerable,

And pods of killer whales, too, or orcas,

Cast about in the enveloping coldness.

Meanwhile in Berkeley Square the nightingale

Sings on as he has done since nineteen-forty.

They tell me the angels at the Ritz

Are backing musicals this year; our smiling

Cocktail maestro, serving among the mirrors

And strip-lights of the modish buttery, pours

Desensitising slugs for the well-to-do

And nicely spoken; they all laugh softly.

In a room off Wigmore Street some fiddlers

Practise the scherzo of a string quartet,

Berg, possibly, and a fragment of Webern.

But the Southern Ocean is still there, you know,

Far off, boundless and screaming to itself

In the darkness, with Paolo and Francesca

And turbulence beyond our understanding –

And still alive with leopard seals and creatures

Eternally eating and being eaten.

2009-09-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

That marshmallow kiss you gave me in the car park –

So unlike the sublimated pecks

From the thin chapped lips of my acquaintances...

2008-02-09T06:10:00.000-08:00

THE THINKER

She took her ideas to the esplanade

On Sundays for a breath of salty air.

All the time they kept dragging on their leads,

Frenzy curbed by imminent suffocation

And whining like mythical dogs of Fo,

Though whenever they were given their freedom

They were revealed as the slaves of their noses,

Ignoring all commands that they return

To the confines of her Guide to Philosophy.

Fergus Allen

Most recent published collection: 'Gas Light & Coke', Dedalus Press, Dublin, 2006