Ian Busby Poetry

Does a dunlin hope for summer’s welcome, Like memories, or a wished-for window, The view from a river-boat under sail? Gentle lapping replaces traffic-noise, A gull breaks the silence, In this world of ripples. Things don't necessarily improve here, They stand removed from our wishes, reflect Sly quayside children, or clouds in the sky To dog-walkers from nearby villages. What can the future be? Not a present surface, Nor invention’s alloy, nor slick technique. More a fairy-story than a rumour, Exist to be believed-in, not proven, Always the same, except for the teller, Which may not matter much Or may be everything. This world of games within games within games, With no definite aim, never-ending, Of just so much and no more, meaningful Because fleeting or difficult to say, Looking across water At countless shards of light. Where the question “Why are we here?” lacks a point; Since the birds consent to live without pride Between broken branches, beneath willows, To be warmed by th...

To spirit, flesh and blood seem strange,  To flesh, spirit seems absurd,  It doesn't seem to be arranged; To spirit, flesh and blood seem strange. The prey halts, sensing danger,  The raptor sees his prey has stirred— For him, mercy would seem strange To one, for whom death is absurd. 

The questions are neither trivial nor trite: I am stalked by my shadow like a dog in summer, I mean to catch his eye, he looks askance, Walk on tiptoes to navigate this dance,  Appraise him of my presence out of sight. He knows my mind, I contemplate his gestures, Walking alone, I see him in the distance, My double, though reversed inside a mirror, Scarcely a wisp of cloud to mar the sky. In what things are we different, he and I?  When did we part company? These days I can't, However I stoop and peer, come any closer, Decipher more than hints, must pass over Lengthy pauses that await no answer, Divulge no confidence, none than might Deny us both a free-hand in our error,  However much we set the world to rights, Go on like him, like him neglect to ask These questions neither trivial nor  trite.

Duty of girls, province of colourful dames, A "worthless occupation, on the whole" To begin, with tentatively naming names, A journey that cannot justify the expense, In search of what one is - a foreign soul. If not abroad, where else find the pretence For the poet’s world, or of the painter’s eye? Ink on paper scarcely seems recompense  For falling, like Icarus from the sky, Against a life's not being all it could Have been, for washing-up as through a flood, In search of Utopia, clamorous in defence Of electrolytic currents, this fountain of blood, Such obligations being set in stone, Yet if in stone, then only in a sense. Fluent in a jingo, lingo known To scholarly rule and praxis, the local patois Whose “inimical character” is our own, But, to the inattentive, overheard, Echoes on the wind, as from afar. What more resembles human-life than words, As one reads them in placards, cannibalised Tetrameters blinking in the night, or blurred As to a drunk? Human nature to ...

What is this place, this province of truth and sin, Of hustle and bustle under Helios? A Leviathan, or the craftsman’s art? A city in miniature contained entire within The locus of a dissevered skull? What dark chaos Could such sleepy eyelids conjure in dreams, What terrible Hades? Who is dreaming, As the scenery is rumbled into place, And who waking, with things just as they seem, To the quiet speech of a nameless face? Some place else, these localised feuds Could not exist, nor such beliefs: Without Venice, where can be the romance? Without Venus, what beauty in the nudes Of marble, for centuries here, a sculptor’s circumstance? How the ideas crowd around! How rude That none should have the manners to wait, Each making of himself a world entire, A universe, thinking to intrude Upon our least concerned, most private state. Ours is a pushing, shoving kind of world, Even given similar ends. To hear your voice would, I’m sure, improve Present purlieus as, the years unfurled Like a map be...

A perfect summer's day, the grass was shorn,  And for a while I mused upon the door - The softness of the stone, the moulding worn,  The dusty feel of flag upon the floor, I didn't think of much, nor needed more,  As swallows hied afar, all seeming torn  The one from the other. Here in the haw, Fitful as a damsel-fly, I mourn,  Hearing the gentle breeze that moves the straw  In fields around, and think of things before,  And wonder what tomorrow's russet dawn May bring to this closed acre's patch of lawn.