Nocturne

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 bookInitium Sapientiae”

________________________

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I saw a crumpled Earth-globe in a window


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


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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Homecoming


______________________

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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An indecent beauty

Driven drowsy by that most sweet indulgence;
Under the glowing canopy, golden as a halo, 
We lay overcome by an indecent beauty.
A perfumed zephyr crept discreetly through our chamber,
Fluttering the veils of vermillion above the heavy damask
And caressing the baroque marble like a dancing innocent;
And wafting on its movement, I thought I could just discern 
The soft beating of the tethered gondolas, 
Gently riding at ease in the plashing night.

© 2019 Paul Carpenter

From Paul’s book ‘The Romancer’

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The Serpent

_______________________________________


‘The great snake lies ever half awake,
at the bottom of the pit of the world, curled.’

TS Eliot

_______________________________________

Dancing like an Easter priest,
Hooded in the purple lee,
Proclaiming celestial visions,
To a fathomless sifting sea.
With no memory of membrane,
Cast out from a lost domain,
Feral exile of the fruit tree,
Cursed to earth and marked as Cain.
Freed by Gods damnation,
To skim the rippling air,
Barely touching,
Coiled and twisting,
Like Leonardo hair.
Across the lamenting dune,
A jewelled sword to the burnished crest,
Undulating slyly and swiftly,
The serpent is whispering west.
Under a sweet rising moon,
Softly scarlet above the last hill,
Deep down in elliptical shadows,
The dark angel is blaspheming still.
Flayed without blood in the sloughing,
His last covering is finally shed;
In temptations thrall to a calling,
Transcending the glorious dead.

©2016 Paul Carpenter

Extract from Paul’s books

“The Storm Dove”

and “Homecoming”

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The Romancer


Embroidering on the truth, the mundane becomes an illuminated fable;
An intrigue of complexity without worldly meaning or morality,
Important only for its fine silken threads of beauty,
Gorgeous in that sweet endeavour for a fabulous ideal;
The grail of a pure emotion given sublime expression.
And like the white lilies that garland the soul with their innocent blossom,
These delicate dreams of purity shall entwine about my brief existence;
Precious beyond any wearisome logic or inane reason.

© 2019 Paul Carpenter

Extract from Paul’s book “The Romancer”

To buy this book £9.99 + p&p

Contact Paul either by Texting or by email….

TEXT +44 781 35 74 778

email: carpenterp80@gmail.com