Thanks for dropping by. It’s rare I put up a poem. “For Work For Love” is commissioned by Workers of Art inspired by Thanet and was launched and projected onto The Turner Gallery in Margate, at 7.30pm on 26th January 2012. It will be projected at the same time on 27th and 28th January. A series of photographs and descriptions will be uploaded at landmarks.
For Work for Love
A Flint night falls the smuggler wakes
Punch sleeps where Judy wept
She descends beneath a Thanet sky
Calcareous clouds of hops and hope
Underground
A candle paints on the tunnel wall
An iris between the loom and luminous
A lunar corona a dull echo of light
(Within this fist of sight she steps)
Inwards onwards as darkness retreats
Fossils break beneath her feet
In gulping eyes a gull’s glare
Deeper into underworld
Beneath the workhouse, beneath royal sea baths
Beneath Arlington house
Beneath the clock tower a penny shudders
On its pendulum then beneath Turner
To the caves, the open caves
Horizon melts sky and sea
For a dawn of fire and earth to come
The sun the sun…
Cold air pushes her chalk face
Water traces her toes as
Blue pencil around a child’s fingers
The trace sea
With cold hands grabs her ankles
She becomes an immigrant
She tastes salt immigrant salt
The moment she steps into the sea
“One Day I Will Leave Here” she screams
At the tide and the Margate Moon
“And I will make something of myself”
Her breath becomes the waves
“we’re all immigrants” said a woman old enough to know
As she foxtrots’ alone in the community centre
“This was an Isle after all. We all crossed the waters for
Work or for love and some if lucky
Return with the same”
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great to meet and sing for you at St nicholas and Turner gallery last week.
projecting the poem was a great idea as i always thought the bleak exterior cladding of the building was a wasted opportunity to reflect Turner’s skies with some metallic finish
as a matter of interest some of the projected lines in the poem differ slightly from those on your bookmark page.was this intended? viz
She descends beneath this Thanet sky…. i think better than a Thanet sky
A candle paints the tunnel wall……i think better than on the tunnel wall
The horizon melts into sky and sea….. i think horizon melts sky and sea is better
The sun the sun… line omitted.probably is better omitted
sorry to be so forward.just wanted to know if differences were deliberate!
Glad you enjoyed your Thanet experience. You captured our insularity.