This poem was written after visiting a restaurant on the Austria-Hungary border, a part of the old Iron Curtain. It transpired that the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had been there and had signed the Visitors Book.
Yuri Gagarin in Uzlop
Yuri Gagarin was there before us
at the Stork Mill
in Uzlop (now Oslip)
with its bean soup and gipsy music
after we'd dropped our leaflets saying,
We the Democrats
are fighting your War
It is not a War
of Land against Land.
Earlier in a brambled copse
there was a confusion of birdsong
peeps whistles and throaty warbles
and a dozen cabbage whites
in a display of dance
amid crabbed oaks
and a strawy tangled sea
under a circling kite on a thermal.
_______
gw 2005
That last verse is tremendous and paints such a picture of the scene - love it.
ReplyDeleteWord verification is relag - don't know whether this is a suggestion that your pipes need relagging but thought I had better mention it in case it has some significance!
I don't really know what relag means. It see that it contains an anagram of the word ale. So it must be time I had a beer. Glad you liked the last verse. It is of course a metaphor for the European's habit of disingetgrating into chaotic disorder and then having a period of re-ordering, all under the eye of those ever present opportunists, the popes, the kings, and the dictators etc.
ReplyDelete