Two Poems by Colin Honnor

Crossing the Dolomites

He observes far off from his peak
Sunlit the Drachenfels, where Siegfried
Slew the dragon to bathe in its magic
Blood, the sun's gold eagle descends to claw
As his far eyes fix on dreams of Piave and Trieste
Below him ravelling feldgrau unweaves
strand by woof the pioneer piton driven suspends
Him his own web. DAnnunzio surly
mutinous foreboding these recalcitrant
Fascisti, away with this vermicelli correct
Notes of the forlorn bugle awaits
defenestral. As camion roar autostrada
Lights angular apparitions appoint wet
Shadows and the spray of cypress as
Black wine in sweating ewer shakes
One bough of time. By crevassed
overhang, avalanche perpends
And as it's shudder maroon distress
Blurts to light up glacier snow field
The frozen group unearthed in effigy
Who had no rocket nor kapok nor signal
Funicular dangles vulnerable cable where
Twisted lift shafts crumple
Ice grimes ice face its black
Grime lined shelves sooted
With terns.

Consider then you who return
As evening blue to grey descended
Over the hills and the suburban streets
The flash of chrome and oxides
To the evening in the gas fire
And the electric lights
The muttering of passengers
As the buses slide through rain,
The children who gathered laughing,
a clutch of sparrows larks finches
Whom you left in the morning
As these slaves returned from labour
Through the stinking camps alleys
They had vanished, as a migrating
Flock of birds leaving for winter.

Di Notte di stella cadenti

Watching the Andromedias
On an lucent April night
When starscapes strangely Western constellations
Above the dark and close copse verdured valley
The stream is hushed tonight
This valley fecund cry and scamper
In the wet rustling nests of leaves and twigs
And the magnificent night ritual begins
Light years of incalculable cacophony
As of a distance beyond the reach of mind
Where imaginable vectors contemplate
Infinity with awed dumbness
And barely veiled panic at the unknown terror
That thinks too closely on this synthesis:
There is only the fugitive shrinking error
Even quantum may not invert wasp thin waist glass
Of the grains of sand funnelled into the past terror.