My eyes fought the city’s sodium yellow glow,
To survey the starry sky shrinking violet without show
From my summer night opened window,
Where I sought some consolation in my leaning out
At 3a.m., unable to sleep in my burning doubt
Of her feelings now, and my guilt at the verbal blow.
©2015 Paul Carpenter
Extract from Paul’s book:
‘The Ghost and Other Manifestations’
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In the half-light gloom of the dreaming hour,
When reveries of past love bloom and flower
Soft as memories whispering in twilight elegies,
Eloquent is their fragrance of bittersweet romance,
Lingering on so long after its last dance of mysteries.
©2015 Paul Carpenter
Extract from Paul’s book
‘The Ghost and Other Manifestations’
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No longer able to lift her head to the citadel,
She only has eyes for its pavement of stone.
Bent double by some catastrophe,
So cruel in its inexorable evolution
Beyond any hope of reprieve or sins absolution,
She is pushing her trolley in a sky-blue raincoat,
With his once promised land now forever at her feet;
Bereaved and alone,
But for the persistence of a sweet memory
That comes to set her free with its secret light,
In the bewildered amnesia of the transient street.
©2013-2017 Paul Carpenter
Extract from Paul’s book:
‘Initium Sapientiae’
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For all beauty that passes without acknowledgement…
For all beauty that passes without acknowledgement,
Unwitnessed by man in his absence or indifference,
I say there exists a blessed reverence,
An immortal testament unseen,
A hymn of praise,
Sung forever by exalting angels in heaven’s eternal dream.
Her hair blew in the innocent wind like flames
Her hair blew in the innocent wind like flames
Licking the night.
A fragmenting halo flying free,
Burning all that knew and sinned,
Within its holy tornado of blessed golden light.
Beauty should not toil
Beauty should not toil,
But in parables be
As the lilies of the field
Spinning only their mysteries
Of purity,
Like their blessed creator,
Unto the end of all our simple destinies.
©2013-2016 Paul Carrpenter
Extract from Paul’s books:
“Homecoming”
and “The Storm Dove”
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Skittish in the greenish guttering corners of the terracotta waves
Tessellating like a childish sea,
The careering harbingers of the sun are returned from Africa
Without ever divining the why.
Beguiled into their pilgrimage by some caprice of its gravity,
They are the obedient congregation flocking to dance for their deity,
For the blinding star,
Reigning omnipotent once more
Over the modestly stuttering and reticent,
British summer sky.
©2016 Paul Carrpenter
Extract from the following books:
“The Storm Dove”
and “Homecoming”
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We paused after we passed on the steps,
To exchange the briefest of backward glances;
A stranger’s eyes meeting mine,
The merest hint of a smile;
A smile of regret at the passing of too much time,
Too many lies,
Too many romances.
It was only a flattering moment in the ship-passing night;
Too little and yet too much for words,
Everything already said that needed to be said;
Just the fleeting acknowledgement of an understanding
Of life’s mysterious circumstances.
© 2017Paul Carpenter
Extract from Paul’s book “Initium Sapientiae”
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I fell into midnight whilst I slept;
Deep as clichéd oceans,
Deep as eternity’s continuum
Fathomless with starlight.
I descended and wept for sweet pity;
For as I fell, I fell in love with all I had known
Or now would ever know;
And helpless in the moment of that revelation,
My dying tree sang a requiem for its crooked branch,
And for me;
A requiem of infinite recrimination.
Passing Kepler, I dreamed of romance.
The twelve strokes of time
Echoing in remembrance of sensation;
From the first chime of caring
To the sublime eternal dance;
That glimpse of the divine,
Bluer than Lapis Lazuli,
Bluer than sea or sky,
Bluer than that staring eye
I pretended not to see,
In the cold crescendo of my arrogance.
Searching the city my tears were legion;
Its walls waltzing into sodium
For the grail that was a heart,
Alone in that crumbling Avalon;
Dissolving like the remnant of a nebula
Into its final oblivion.
The everlasting solitude
Of my sleep-fall to the unknown region.
© 2016-2017 Paul Carpenter
Extract from Paul’s book “Initium Sapientiae”
________________________
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I saw a crumpled Earth-globe in a window;
Continents and seas
Creased and folded,
Divided by degrees,
Imprinted with the marks of men.
The air had escaped to the air,
Like water from a melting;
A deflated ball
Covered in garish colours to appeal to the child;
Formed from a substance that will never perish,
Till that it models has finally ceased.
No more knowledge needed then;
Nothing new to map to a scale.
© 2017 Paul Carrpenter
Extract from Paul ‘s book “Initium Sapientiae”
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I came to a vision:
A hillside resounding with angelic praise of love,
Ascending high through its ancient trees;
Their fugue of branches splitting the sky
In to shocks of light above;
Triumphant and ecstatic
And dancing to heaven.
And the black hawthorn shall reap the sun,
To sing forth blossoms in a spring that will come;
Then the mocking crown cut for a kingdom
Shall magick glorious in its cruel blood,
Another music.
© 2017 Paul Carrpenter
Extract from Paul’s books:
“Initium Sapientiae”
and “Homecoming”
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______________________
I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light.’
Henry Vaughan b.1622
______________________
At the vanishing point of Caerau road,
Take my eyes for your trophies
And let the men lead me now;
Singing along this rising ground
By the Llynfi’s twilight waterfalls,
Toward its springing hill.
Where a prodigal child
Will at last redeem its vow,
Made in a green summer dreaming
Long ago;
Before such squandering seasons of my blood
Left me wasting and wondering and wandering wild.
Profligate pink and blue flowers
Linger on for the last dying light;
Lying in blossomed comfort,
Strewn blind beside this path to dawn
Set among the rushes and bramble thorn,
Fading softly into the slow-falling night.
Where a weary blinkered boy once led
Work-struck sullen ponies from the head,
To run and rest in bruised silver fields
Beneath the towering trees unholy writ;
Black and ancient as the burning rock,
Cut from the Devil’s own pit.
Now I shall cross again those meadows into the boastful shadows,
So proud of their grabbing fear;
That hide the raging Minotaur who knows only his labyrinth,
Yet still kills without a tear.
Hollow words will splinter in the crackling litter of myths
Snapping below my tread,
On this trail of broken promises and deceptions bitter kiss;
The rhymes of bard and poet once more blazing in my head,
As a manuscript of devotion illuminates this ascension
To a final fiery crest;
Where I will stand at last breathless with my brothers
Under the holy stars that watch and bless the world;
Till the mothering morning of lark song and hawk flight
Breaks high above the shining land,
And embraces us close with light,
To rest.
© 2017 Paul Carrpenter
Extract from Paul’s book “Homecoming”
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Paul Carpenter - Poet 