This post is duplicated on both
poetry blogs today.
For anyone interested in
gay-interest crime fiction, my new serial Blasphemy starts on my fiction blog today; read
the synopsis (on a previous post) to see if it is your cup of tea:
Meanwhile...
Several readers (gay and straight
alike) who have been kind enough to say they enjoyed my last poetry collection On the Battlefields of Love have also asked about the location for
the cover design. The photo
is of the folly at Virginia Water.
An annoying oversight on my part meant the
poem was not included in the collection as originally intended; it will appear
in a new collection Tracking
the Torchbearer to be
published in the spring. [As with all my collections, it will contain
100+ poems in themed sections for easy reading and will include gay-interest
material.]
Virginia Water is a
pretty village in Surrey, UK, just a few miles from London, and boasts some
very affluent residents; it takes its name from the lake in nearby Windsor
Great Park. The lake's name was
transferred from a previous stream, which was probably named after Elizabeth I,
the 'Virgin Queen'.
The folly in the cover photo is not your usual folly (a folly is a
building or part of a building that is built for no purpose whatsoever, and can
look a bit ornate). This folly is authentic Roman ruins, and aren't even from
England; they were acquired in the 19th Century from their original location in
the Roman city of Leptis Magna which is very close to where Tripoli in Libya is
today. The ruins were first taken to the British Museum in London where they
stayed for some years, before an architect 'rebuilt' them alongside the lake at
Virginia Water.
This poem
is a villanelle, and last appeared on the blogs in 2010.
A MEASURE OF CREATIVITY
Like a folly satirising our
history,
love takes to task its fears;
nature’s last laugh on humanity
Find the world’s blackest comedy
imposed on we poor actors
like a folly satirising our history
Glistening like a vision of
eternity,
a lake of glad-sad tears;
nature’s last laugh on humanity
Watch how feisty skies effectively
feed on the world’s prayers
like a folly satirising our history
Hear the trees compose a melody
falling mostly on cloth ears;
nature’s last laugh on humanity
Deception, left to cascade prettily
down centuries of applause,
like a folly satirising our
history;
nature’s last laugh on humanity
(Virginia Water, UK. May 9th 2009)
Copyright R. N. Taber, 2009
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