SCARLETSHADE -- Art Thomson

ART THOMSON

COLLABORATIONS WITH NIN & LANCE GALLAGHER

Dull Summer
© 2000 Art Thomson

once objets d'art:
summer time is novelization, restricted:
the narrative is ofa bolstering up the vain and vicious.
ah, the passage of time!

Sojourn In Hamlets
© 2000 Art Thomson

to confine opinion to the metropolis
would be wrongly leading;
strangers to the land must wander through parks and gardens,
he must visit castles of the Ancient; farms and cottages;
he must visit the hedges, and the green lanes;
attends fairs, in the villages;
in all the habits and humours, of the people he sees,
he will indeed feel, it is also a homebound journey.

The Cities
© 2000 Art Thomson

our large cities, absorb the wealth and fashion;
they are the fixed abodes, of elegance and intelligence;
boorish peasantry is not to be found.
O England, a rendezvous of hinted passions;
of gaiety and dissipation;
a small portion of the year to the merriment;
I miss the congenial rural life.

The Rose
© 2000 Art Thomson

a true affection, with trouble, with care;
to have outlived the susceptibility of early feeling,
the gay dissipated life, chilled and frozen by the world;
the coldest bosom, when once rekindled,
a dormant fire in the deepest of the soul.
a rose in bloom is to behold.

Bankruptcy Of The Heart
© 1999 Art Thomson

there her ambition strives for empire;
there her avarice seeks the hidden treasure.
she embarks the whole soul,
in the traffic of affection;
and if it is to be not reciprocated,
she is hopeless in despair,
a bankruptcy of the heart.

Life Of A Woman
© 1999 Art Thomson

a woman lives, as companion to her feelings;
they are turning to ministers of sorrow;
where shall she look for consolation?
her lot is to be wooed and won;
unhappy in her love, her heart is left desolate.

The Funeral
© 1994 Art Thomson

as the funeral train approached the grave, the parson issued from the rural church;
arrayed in the surplice, with prayerbook in hand, attended by the clerk;
the service was a charity; the deceased had been destitute.
o life ended this way!

The Boar's Head Tavern
© 1990 Art Thomson

votive lights burnt before Bacchus; a staple of good fellows merrymaking;
my brethern of the quill, I thought it but proper,
to pay homage to the Boar's Head tavern.
what have heroes of yore done for me?
nay, but madcap revelry!
a legendary human oblivion
a fellow at the Boar's Head tavern.

The Fair Maid's Tragedy
© 1990 Art Thomson

sleep in thy peace, may sweet grows from thine urn;
the rites of life and death, yet passed with hearts burnt;
forsaken flowers, kinder and gentler;
lay willow branches upon thy grave;
whilst summer lasts, and I live;
I will sweeten thy sad grave, thou shalt not lack
the flowers like thy face.

On Parting
© 1997 Art Thomson

here a dwelling place, in my heart you will lay;
some men may fancy a false embrace;
I assure you sweetheart, nay, not I;
you may be far tomorrow, yet you stay;
let the memory remains, as years will go;
our parting is but a delayed union.

Beauty In Abundance
© 1996 Art Thomson

dreams, that elude my frenzied clutch,
hands, stark, on a dead of the night,
which nevermore shall render clasp,
soothe a weeping maiden to rest,
you guard my spirit,
take, I give it willingly.

My Friend Nat
© 1997 Art Thomson

he was living half-itinerant life, also,
he was a travelling gazette, he was the carrier of the gossip budget.
esteemed by the ladies, as a man of great erudition;
he was a poet and a master story-teller.
of the boding cry of the tree toad he told;
of the harbinger of storms at the sea;
the dreray hooting of the owl, a sting of a beetle as well, he masterly told.
the streets of London in the rain, as we sit around the table, drinking and talking;
we rekindle the light of yearning;
my friend Nat has lighten up another continent.

Heroes Of Yore
© 1997 Art Thomson

they are going to vanish in the valley of forgetfulness;
and their history will be lost;
perchance, memories will survive,
to people in imagination his glades and groves,
like the fauns and satyrs,
the sylvan and deities, of antiquities.
a poet will remember.

Recollection At The Deep Black Millpond
© 1999 Art Thomson

in a morning stroll along the banks, a beautiful stream which flows down the Welsh hills;
I came by chance to the deep black millpond, a greater part of the day,
a lubberly country urchin came down the hills singing old songs;
a tortoise slip sideways from off a stone, the watery world is around.
I recollected, the faces of the past;
of betokening poverty, in terms of soul enrichment;
I made to under a beech tree, pure sweet air, I lay on grass and built castles
in bright pile of clouds until I fell to dreams.

Holiday At The Country
© 1999 Art Thomson

perhaps the impending holiday might have given more animation to the country,
as fellows would make it merry; good spirits in abundance;
perhaps it might be owing to the pleasing serenity,
reigned in my mind, that I fancied I saw cheerfulness in every countenance
throughout the journey.

Encounter In Jogja
© 1999 Art Thomson

some enamoured country lass, with admiring throng of lads;
this bird of dawning singeth all night long.
amidst the general call to happiness;
the bustle of the spirits, and stir of the affections which prevailed:

what bosom can remain insensible;
as a tear I fancied I saw there?

no greater poetess of life itself I had seen before.
yet she was sorrowful, unspoken;
a sweetheart from afar, she had lost;
I wish the Lord given me the best of tongues,
for I wanted to console her, if only I could.

the early love again rose green to memory
as I watched her grief, she had concealed;
of home beyond the sterile waste of my years;
fraught with the home-dwelling joys:

she wished me happiness amidst her own sorrow:
how can I remain joyful as she had not the same?

I wish she knew, she reanimated the drooping spirits;
she is the Arabian breeze, waft the freshness of the distant fields,
to the weary pilgrim of the desert.

When Deep Sleep Falleth Upon Man
© 1999 Art Thomson

as if the evergreens distributed about houses and churches;
emblems of peace and gladness;
the pleasing effect in producing fond of associations and kindling benevolent sympathies.

the sound of the rude minstrelsy,
breaks upon the mid-watches of a winter night with the effect of a perfect harmony.

Westminster Abbey
© 1999 Art Thomson

the walls are stained and tinted by time and weather:
a marble figure of the Mother
is stretched upon a tomb, the thistle.
I was weary with wandering;
I sat down by the monument,
revolving in my mind
the checkered story of Mary.

Month Of May
© 1999 Art Thomson

a garden faire, an arbour green with leaves beset;
so thick the branches and the sharp juniper is sweet;
worship all the lovers be, this month of May.

The Captive's Solace
© 2000 Art Thomson

an elaborate and iterated repining in poetry;
the effusions of morbid mind under misery, venting bitterness upon the world.

attempt to walk at daybreak,
to escape from the dreary meditations of a sleepless pillow:

bewailing in the chamber thus alone;
fortified of thought and wobegone.

The Cottage
© 2000 Art Thomson

arrays of flowers and plants of tender and graceful foliage,
the introduction of a green slope of velvet turf,
the blue silver gleam of water, all these are with a delicate whisper,
come to the cottage, leave the city behind.

the country has diffused a degree of taste and tender elegance;
a semblance of the best of the green summer;
all these bespeak the tasteful life,
a natural grandeur and beauty preserved in time.

if ever Love, as poets sing, delights to visit the cottage,
it must be the cottage of an English peasant.

enervated my strength, multiplied my diseases;
superinduced upon a thousand superflous wants;
diminished my means of mere existence;
it was not whimsical.

it imposed a gulf, I lost the secure life I left behind;
the last blue line of my native land
faded away like a cloud in the moonlit horizon,
as if I had closed the last leaf of a book.

the land contained the most dear to me;
what vicissitudes might occur in it, before I should come to it again!
but I gazed at the golden clouds at the East;
fancied them some fairy realms:

the gentle undulating billows,
rolling their silver volumes:

happy shores ahead.

Dayspring

Art: for Allyssa, your days of devotion, sweet angel.
Nin: for someone or other out there, neither cares anyway.

I dream of rain, of morning in May;
of love and devotion, they rear the sweet emotion
I dream of a desert, an Oktober and there is no fest,
of nothing but sand, stormy and red
though may your body confined, and yet soft love a prisoner bound;
neither check nor chain hath found, the voluptuous vernal kind,
which calls forth the latent romance of a man's temperament
Something ridiculous in every catastrophe --
nothing of the dreams I have had before, nothing I will get tomorrow,
of the raging something in me that you don't know.
o soft and gentle rain, sweet day, so pure, so calm, so bright;
the bridal of the earth and the sky;
every restless passion is charmed down by your beauty.
Rain in the sand, it dries in a blink -- is it just another mirage? I think it is --
I just threw up on his lap -- and what a stupid me to think, he wouldn't care less!
And the windy morning, for whom it cries?
the recurring passion for thee is freshly green;
as the pasture in the rural scene, so peacefully laid;
a cloud of dust is far behind us; we are now one.
My passion for you is the most ludicrous in the galaxy --
I want you so bad I think I'd better be with the Army
so I could at least hope I'd get killed instantly by the enemy.
yet our dear friend, she is far from the land, where her hero sleeps;
she cannot let go, her island of sorrow;
makes us aggrieve, yet we know, we are blessed with one another;
she sings the wild songs of her dear native plains;
o sunbeam rests; love awakes; there is yet a glorious morrow.
Look at them. Like Tristan and Isolde --
just staring into each other's eyes, as if nothing else is alive --
makes me sick, but there's the green monster too, right here, crying "how could you!"
They sing the tired old melody again and again, of how sweet is love, and other stupid themes
-- morrow what, glory what, love what, when nights sting?
the chap named Moore, the Irish poet, was writing a fine poetry, on the fair maid of Astolat;
"and lovers around her are sighing," thus he said; "but coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps";
ah! sorrow in love, but there is remedy for those who believe.
A wandering wonder, like a ghost, is the sun still up when this night goes home?
If only it isn't you. If only it isn't this stupid nagging feeling for you.
What remedy? I had been believing and what do I get -- thee?

the animation of lovely scenes is given;
you are the companion of my most retired walks;
amidst the pensive beauty of the valley;
in the freshness of joyous morning;
I remember your beaming smiles,
and bounding gaiety;
and when sober evening returns,
with its gathering shadows and subduing quiet;
I call to mind many a twilight hour of gentle talk.

no spirit dares stir abroad;
I drew aside the curtain when a strain of music seemed to break forth
in the air below the window;
the shooting stars attend me, also befriend you;
let not dark your glow,
the stars of the night will lend you their light;
like tapers clear without number;
a merry christmas to you,
dear sister from abroad.

in the course of my rambles;
an avenue of limes; the boughs of interlaced flowers;
interlaced so as to form in summer, an arched way of foliage;
grief nearly sunk into the earth;
birds among the cornices and fissures of the walls;
so awfully guarding the church, from malediction.

I am a midshipman, a madcap fellow;
I am a merry chap, the lads call me merry-andrew;
to my whim I stay true,
be I a buffoon, I am a lampoon of you!

the welcome is clear;
lovely gradients and clattering beauty.
familiarity helps to reassure...

the conversation need not be interrupted;
nor its amenity disturbed.
derision; an instructive method; a humble appeal;
a silent heart is deferred to another place and another time.

Conference Of Two