by David Constantine

Words, dear words, bide with me a while yet, I beg you
Don’t leave me hearing nothing but the noise
Be there, and I do not mean like staff
In a tyrannous office at beck and call told what to do
And quickly—not that, nothing like that, only let me know
By a sign now and then that you’re there
And I’ll bide my time, I’ll be quiet, I’ll listen
I’ll not snatch and grab, I’ll be listening out for you
For your being there, for your trusting yourselves into my hearing
And never—it goes without saying—
Into my ownership, words, free as the fowls of the air
Now and then come near
I’ll be quiet, dear whisperers, visitors into my dreams
Let me live a while longer in the hope you bring me
Words . . .

by David Constantine

In water never still, never set in her ways
To become a writing perused and developed by an attentive sky
And be always open to the suggestions of sun, moon and stars

And the quiet troops of cumulus and from below
Also by the plant lives pushing up through her, by their rooted feelings
To be taught more and more so long as she lives

And the infinite races of life are able to thrive in her –
Oh to be writ in her, to be accepted
Into one of those eddies that creep almost surreptitiously along

Under the riverbank against the determined flow
In small brave spirals but making not for home, not for the source
But for one of the stillnesses, pauses, holdings behind a falls

To bide there quiet a while in the din of it thoroughly attending
To the jubilant rush and topple of headlong life. I’d say
Any of the living you loved and who love you still

Would be glad to believe you are now writ in water…

by David Constantine

And in that year, shortly before Remembrance Day
Came the merger of the res publica and the cloaca maxima.
You know it makes sense, said the Leader
And flooded the airways with his soundest men.
Their task? To explain to the ‘Electorate’
(Quaint term  y the hour becoming quainter)
The benefits. Transparency, for example. And how effortful
Had been the keeping of the two vital zones apart. Vast saving
Of energy when saving energy
Was every citizen’s duty. Quite soon, the spokesmen said
We shall be used to the stench and in the brown stuff itself
Shall dig for victory, grow our own, stand tall
And utterly dishearten our competitors.

by Bruce Weigl

No moon tonight that I can see
through clouds that gathered as the sun
went down beyond the lake of the
returned sword, named for the story
that everyone can tell, the tortoise
who saved an empire, and gave
the weary warrior king not
just a sword to slay intruders,
but a will to carry on.
In the end people gathered
around the lake at night, waiting
for the giant head to
surface again, and part dark waters
to bring them nothing less than
a peaceful life where judgment breaks
across the surface of the lake
exactly like the rising sun.