Poetry Drawer: From the Pound Cantos: CENTO XXIV: A line from Margaret Atwood: geographies: Chorley: Cursive script by Mark Young

From the Pound Cantos: CENTO XXIV

This is Mitteleuropa. Guns are a
merchandise. Have special privi-
lege. No retail tax or any of the
other taxes, no broken contracts.
Everything in its place, & nothing
left over. Let things remain as they
are. A perennial extension of fran-
chise to continue one’s labours. The

words rattle. Surely we have heard
this before. The bodies so flamed
in the air, took flame. Flames
flowed into sea. For three days
now as if snow cloud over the sea.
& for three days, & none after.

A line from Margaret Atwood

This talk of films made in the early
21st century, as if it was so very
long ago, is making me thirsty. But
then I’m more concerned with some

different points of view, working on
something done a century earlier,
1913, de Chirico’s The Uncertainty of
the Poet, with its strange foreground,

a bunch of bananas, poised against the
shadowy background porticos. So much
was going on in it: but now, with a 90°
rotation & the use of much erasure I’ve

reduced it to unlinked islands of activity.
Have kept its focus — though with the
certainty of a poet have retitled my piece
A Last Banana for Giorgio de Chirico.

geographies: Chorley

Sometimes the Bolton &
Preston Line of the Lanca-
shire & Yorkshire Railway
Company goes swimming

in the Chor. Sometimes,
when the rain is heavy, the
reverse can occur. Neither
bears the other any ill will.

Cursive script

I sit
in a chair
in a room lit
only by the
lost light
of late
evening

eating
dried fruit
from a mini-
pack made
of a dull
paper that
stamps its own
taste upon the
contents

& think about
moving
to a house in
the country
where the words
don’t have to
be summoned

but come
of their own
accord when
they’re ready
to be
milked.

Mark Young’s first published poetry appeared over sixty-two years ago. Much more recent work has appeared, or is to appear, in The Sparrow’s Trombone, Scud, Ygdrasil, Mobius, SurVision, NAUSEATED DRIVE, Unlikely Stories, & Word For/Word.

You can find more of Mark’s work here on Ink Pantry.

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