12 Poems (English) From The Poetry Hat Poem by Sheena Blackhall

12 Poems (English) From The Poetry Hat



1. Making a Poem Hat (non bai tho (poetic conical hats) .
A simple conical hat is made in 15 stages,
First, you must got to the forest
To collect young leaves of the tree named "Bo Qui Diep'

Next, the tender leaves are exposed to mist
Then dried and ironed

Now, form a bamboo frame
From 16 bamboo splints.
Attach the leaves to the frame.
This stage is called "cham, "
Made by the hands of young girls

Two thin layers of leaves.
The hats are covered by oil
And dried beneath the sun.

Craftsmen add poems and paintings of Hue
To the slender leaves, creating "non bai tho"
(poetic conical hats) .

How grand to carry a poem upon your head
Like a flower or a basket of fruit!


2.Warlock's Lair
The warlock lies in the kirkyard
Along with his black familiars
Restless under the sod

Between Heaven and Earth
He is neither fish nor fowl
His soul's in limbo, a half- thing,
Lucifer's turncoat follower

The shadow on a window of the kirk's
A coat of corbie's feathers,
Worn by black-souled Angels
Wheeling over their long departed master

Gold of the sun beats down
On unhallowed bones
The reedy grass on the grave
Still whispers his spells
His power's a byword, a whisper
Branded into the memory of the parish


3.Pheasant Square
Pheasant Square has a statue at its heart of
The Prince of Wales pheasant,
Phasianus colchicus principalis

The square is located in Birnam Wood,
Between the Birnam oak
And the famous Birnam sycamore

The lower branches of the oak tree rest on crutches
The first 10ft of the trunk itself are hollow
Providing cover and shelter for any pheasants of rank

Macbeth himself awarded all pheasants
The freedom of this wood being citizens
Of the ancient kingdom of Animalia

Males are frequently seen taking the air,
Being foppish and fond of bright colours

Females are not expected
To flaunt themselves, but to hold to modesty
In all matters

At pheasant ceremonials, invitations are sent
Across the world to those of the blood royal, to:

Lady Amherst's pheasant
The Nepal kalij pheasant
The Vietnamese pheasant,
The Siamese fireback,
The Tibetan eared pheasant,
The Mikado pheasant,
The Mongolian ring-necked pheasants
The Tarim pheasants,
The Chinese ring-necked pheasants,
The Malayan peacock-pheasant,
The Bornean peacock-pheasant,
The Palawan peacock-pheasant,

There is a memorial to Sir Frances Pheasant, Duke of the Ten Plumes

The pheasant law court lies under a spreading dule tree
The prison's under the jurisdiction
Of the county gamekeeper

For the High Treason of contributing recipes
To a book of game-bird cooking,
Sir Cockburn pheasant was held up by his spurs
And roasted on a slow spit until done to a turn


4.Eve (numero uno)
Blue, headless, Eve burst from Adam's cage of ribs
Hairy pitted, sweating, stinking of fish

A flash in the pan, a seven day's wonder
Or so the snake thought, till she crushed its head

A strange birthing indeed.
Was it a liberation, or a curse?

Expelled from her sanctuary
Her children have soiled the oceans,
Polluted the clouds
Was Adam an accident,
Eve an afterthought?

The knowledge she found in the apple
Wasn't the nicest kind. It nurtured deceit and treachery
Harboured nuclear power and genetic tinkering

The Goddess sits in the TV screen
While baying crowds applaud a pimply twerker

The Goddess's name is Kali, ruler of death
Blood and rage are her gifts to womankind
Eve's her adopted daughter
Making a charnel house of all they find


5. The Washington Café
To the left, unseen, a ferris wheel is turning
In the carnival pleasurelands
Jugglers perch over money piles
Oilmen treat screaming girlfriends to trips of terror
Bonsai gulls high up in the ether
Sail through nimbus and cirrhus

The Washington Café's a promenade institution
Italian ice cream made on premises
Bacon roll buttered and oozing trickles of taste
This is cloud no nine in child heaven
The table parasols fold their wings like flamingos

On the beach below, sandcastle moments
Are passing in full sail, loaded with chuckling children
Plastic shovels tip sand into groin and cleavage
Until the promised paradise appears
A knickerbocker glory by Canale!


6. Winter Tale
There's a lost path in that cavernous, ancient avenue
Owl haunted knots and gnarls, peer from the creaky boughs

Sparrow shivers in her lodge
Hops between cobwebbed cavities
Alder, yew, and willow her silent witnesses

Withered arching branches support the sky
Like locked grey skeletal antlers of rutting stags
This tunnel of wind's been seasoned by ninety winters
Northerlies batter the draughty tree-roof
Autumn has threshed the beeches bare of leaves

The forest floor is an eerie, noiseless, tapestry
Of needles of pine and fir. The ghostly hare
Hides here, in his ermine coat


7.Meadow
That meadow where I watched the cornflowers dance,
Away beyond the farm house washing line
I spent my childhood Sundays there, not thinking -
Such places should be frozen points of time
Garnered and stored, sad moments to enhance
Now when the heavy years are grave-wards sinking
When cold Ambition's bites no longer hurt,
And all my gains, no more than empty creels
I will put on the hermit's outworn shirt
Foreswear the earthly joys of waste and feasting
Follow my thought, that to the meadow steals
A place so dear my mind will not let go
That path where in the sun the poppy turns
Where peace and insect hum together grow
Each harebell its bent slender neck reveals
Its modesty that all flamboyance spurns
And here, the foxglove sheds its petalled skin
An ragged robin wears a homely dress
The field mouse in the grass finds comfort in
The lesson that each tiny creature learns
By instinct, all things fade to nothingness
And winter strips away all that is vain
No matter that for yesterday you yearn
The meadow, though, in memory I retain,
A balm in old age and its emptiness


8.The Key
Come in, the strange key hinted:
To a chancel of nightingales
To a black angel's workshop
To a hummingbird's ballroom
To the cage of a Chinese chaffinch
To the charred bones of an ex-marriage
To a reef of seahorses
To Michael Finnegan's coal bunker
To Mrs Fitz-Gerald's hysterectomy


9. Fox-Trot
When Mr Fox trots out
The tossed dice of the hours are loaded in his favour
Which is why he came to jump over the lazy dog
Giving the pack the slip one Boxing Day
Leaving the huntsman red in the face and raging


10. Rainforest Shack
The wooden shack in the rainforest
Is painted in rainbow colours

Beneath the swaying coconut palms,
It's near the shady trail
Of an overgrown rubber plantation

The birds from the rainforest are currently
Checking out secluded beaches, flourishing mangroves.

The occupant of the shack
Is diving, in a coral reef 5,000 years old

Around him swirl sea hares,
Sea squirts, octopii, starfish,
Sand dollars, sponges, cuttlefish

Tourists tread a boardwalk through the mangrove,
Into the very heart and bowels of Eden


11.The Singing Bowl
The moon loves her singing bowl
It hums the song of the Universe

Om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha

Along the old Silk Road,
Nepal, Japan and China,
India, and Korea,
The children of the singing bowl
Chime out the stages of thought
For the Buddhist Faithful

Om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha

Harmonic overtones reverberate
Over the Ocean of Storms
The Sea of Serenity,
The Sea of Tranquility
And all moon's many craters

Om gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha


12.Death & the Maiden
(With apologies to Elizabeth Bishop, ‘One Art')

In Earth and space there's only one real master;
When agèd and infirm, He's heaven sent
When Death comes knocking then it's no disaster.

When life has lost its savor, you can't muster
The strength to face the days, your courage spent.
Then Death comes as a friend, a kindly master.

When you lose friends and family…faster, faster:
You too will wish to go where they've been sent
To sojourn. Death will not seem a disaster.

But gaze upon a death mask made of plaster
Of child or maiden, then the heart is rent.
No words can soothe, however wise the pastor

Look upwards to the sky, there's nothing vaster,
The stars swim there, in some black continent.
And yet so cold. In youth, Death's a disaster.

However truly carved, the alabaster
Is not the living soul, that's evident
Death of the young's a lesson hard to master
Like gentle fruit, frost-blasted, a disaster

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