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Welcome to PoetryRepairShop 06.04:043NANCY HOGAN Beaver Soul 27 October 13, 1992. by the River Teign, near Sandy Ford (Chagford)And what is love? To be human is to allow It to pierce you with Its tender arrows, though you feel certain you will die. Only we don't die. We live more vividly. Life without Love is like a stream bed through which no water runs; like a house without a clock that chimes the hours so musically that you wait eagerly for the next one. Or like an afternoon sitting on the bank of a small river without sun to intensify the green of grasses and mosses, to lift the warm brown of the sand, patient between the black hulks of the rocks, into view. You can have all the love you want if you aren't greedy; if you can live with a certain number of absurd hours in every day; if you understand that sarcasm on the beloved's tongue is his way of keeping himself from aching too much; if you're clear about where your own heart has rooted itself, no matter how many miles from home you are. After suffering, and then paradox, and then more suffering; after you've yielded all the fruits, and watched the leaves turn brown and drop off, one after another; after your blood has had to retreat from the terrible, frozen wastes of winter, and Zeus never pelted his Greeks with ice like you've had your soft skin pelted, then you learn the truth of Love: how it lives with its own whimsy and its own secret power, beyond thought, beyond reason, beyond understanding. It doesn't even require to be fed or given to drink in the long famine. Drought It already knew about and was prepared for. Memory held It safe below the water's surface. You might be full of despair but your heart, its roots tucked into Love's power, never lost faith. It accepts Evil and Good, the Hate that Love can mask His face with. It bides Its time. And Time, for Love, is redemptive. The river has to keep rushing, but the stones and their mosses stay. The sand will be there. The roots are persistent. They know what we forget: that only such tender moments of clear-eyed seeing into each other's souls matter. Only those times last. The rest passes, like water. The sand may shift, but it stays; it knows. The rocks have their memory, too. And every year the graceful grasses stretch up because the sun, of course, leans down. Copyright 2006, all rights retained by the poet |
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 NANCY HOGAN | 06.04: 043 page navigation
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MARTIN JERVIS Innocentia In PaceRoman mosaics live at the Bardo museum, fish And lions; hunting dogs, teeth in a neck, look Into the naked eyes of decadence. Wealth and taste, Panoramic gods and goddesses, Herculean still life Lifts from chips of stone buried in form and colour. Outside, well-hoofed gardens of gnarled olive trees, Date palms, hibiscus, oleander and hose-watered grass, Burnt umber; heady drugs snorted from perfumed Mediterranean planting, herbs, succulents; santolina And euphorbia, opposite ended the lavatory galleries. Open petals, a scented mirage, rare sanctuary, An oasis of water, down wind the tessellated lion, Nostrils to antelope, savours man's bouquet. Brave but Desperate souls, crouched sprinters in sweaty, torrid, Lung rasping heat, rush in and out with one breath. Copyright 2006, all rights retained by the poet |
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 Based in Leeds, England, MARTIN JERVIS has published in Orbis and Outposts, Blue Fifth Review (US) and Perigee (US). | 06.04: 043 page navigation
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MARTIN JERVIS Monday MorningMonday is a bad day for staggering. Stagger at dawn and rubber ball Off walls that lead to the light. Moth-like. Bouncing as a pinball machine That springs bearings with a twang Towards the wear and tear bits. Silver ball. The pH factor has dropped below seven. Compound air and bile and hydrochloric Tenderizes muscle steak in walls. System failure. A reaction is repeated by organic cycle. Historical data of earlier diagnosis Have been archived and forgotten. A convert re-awakened. Copyright 2006, all rights retained by the poet |
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 If you have been a reader of Eclipse, Decanto, Starving Art (US), Braquemard, Everyman Press, Poetic Hours, or a host of other quality poetry sources, then you have encountered MARTIN JERVIS in a variety of moods. He won the 'Reader's Choice' award for a poem in the Black Rose and will be no less appreciated by loyal readers of PoetryRepairShop. | 06.04: 043 page navigation
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