PATRICK WILLIAMSON

 

PATRICK WILLIAMSON

 

You Came To Me

 

Your dark eyes flit and swerve,

on the way to serious moonlight

where you dance into the dusk

 

where you disappear into the crowd

for a second on a summer night

 

under a gold and silver moon

and sleep curled up in a blanket

 

then you go, and minutes tick by

suddenly I am left searching

 

this quiet after dashing for the last train

I retain the beauty of your walk,

 

hiding hips in shadow, as the smoke wafts.

over the pages, the spread of ink,

 

evening time, passing time, love shared

 

Shafted Or Not?

 

Massive walls built in a swamp

so pages yellow in ruthless rays

 

and rainforests give us slippery lintels

such is our glorious legacy

 

driven by tides, as a styrene smile

tries to metabolise into biomass,

 

as animals mistake it for food,

what invisible impurities exist

 

in the world, mister dimness man

whose eyes roll, look up in despair,

 

you’re just a guest in all this you say,

waving lanterns outside the Judas,

 

well hear me, all you who neglect

the present, while I breathe, I hope

 

You Are

 

The lament of

my aching night

          fragmented

 

body and breath burns

the shell, layers peeling away

 

I will call you

                   love

 

pluck

open the door the words locked

 

the wood grooved

with every cry and hue

 

the crux

that part of me, always

earth, blood and flesh

 

seeped in

immortal dark that haunts the shade

 

that reminds us each day

slips into

the home straight, so simple

 

the world

battered but full of life

 

the dream we had

whatever happens, you’ll be there.

 

PATRICK WILLIAMSON

 

PATRICK WILLIAMSON is an English poet and translator. Most recent poetry collection: Traversi (English-Italian, Samuele Editore, 2018), Beneficato (Samuele Editore, 2015), Gifted (Corrupt Press, 2014), Nel Santuario (Samuele Editore, 2013; Menzione speciale della Giuria in the XV Concorso Guido Gozzano, 2014). Editor and translator of The Parley Tree, Poets from French-speaking Africa and the Arab World (Arc Publications, 2012) and translator notably of Tunisian poet Tahar Bekri, Quebecois poet Gilles Cyr, as well as Italian poets Guido Cupani and Erri de Luca. Founding member of transnational literary agency Linguafranca