Excerpt from
A Rounded Character.

Part 2. 1.)

v.

Over the faultless
Sky day breaks fey
In love & hate.

Haunted by our fears
We commit abominations
Over the breaking day.

Condemn our ancestors
Or honour them only to justify
Strategies for the battlefield.


Excerpt from
Aphrodite’s Girdle.
Part 3. Feet. 2.)

ii.*

‘Ours is not to reason why.
Ours is but to do & die.’

*Charge of the Light Brigade.
A.Tennyson.

‘You & I are fit for nothing but to die
We can die for liberty,
or bow down to Burgundy.’

*Operetta. Vagabond King. J.Villon.

The leader before its troops demonstrates
The futility of the metaphor, Charge.

Excerpt from
Ariel Bathing
Compilation of sonnet type pieces. i – xix.

xviii.

The yoked cart became a fiery chariot,
The trekking pony a fierce steed.
In the first flight in that appetite for blood,
Victory to be through death refreshed,
Warrior & steed became one in the battle.
Man & beast fused in life & death,
From the fallen rose the first song of liberty,
Warrior & steed had drunk their glory
Through the blood of their dead, their health.
The spirit of man had been born;
The crone cackled under the moon
For the hunting time had begun
& the inheritance passed down:
Onto the beast, warrior & steed became one.

Excerpt from
Blue Corn.
Part 3. Black Sheep. 1.)
-----
i.

War Paint*

In the beginning the first human ape wore war paint
& invaded all other ape territories bringing to
them berserk gesticulations and confusions.

Later humans turned again to apes and baked salt
where war paint laid waste & there were scars &
fission on the face of the earth.

Then the heavenly ape descended.
Humans worshipped it but it wandered
lost in exile & disappeared into the waters.

Humans lacked it but it was too late
for on their markings was war paint.

*After Augusto Monterroso.

Excerpt from Riding the Beast
Part 1. 1)

viii.

Sunday Afternoon.

He undresses like an ostrich, plume
All & pilot brain,
As with the genial smile of the flea,
Mottled and scrawny of limb, he
Leaps into foam.

On the ceiling shadow fighters zoom,
Before, in blaze of pink fume,
A collage of explosions
The minarets adorn.

The Mughal hordes swoop down,
Down from the Ukraine,
No room for immigration,
On this Sunday afternoon.


Copyright Robin Ouzman Hislop. 2003.
All rights reserved.

Five Selected Poems Against War