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SurVision Magazine

An international online magazine that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.


Issue Six

  

PHILIP KANE



Prelude to a Murder



The white telephone.  He is coming
there, or here, it is no matter
for the police, an accident
or a disappearance, a man
peering down a hole in a field,
the end of sensation or a storm,
either sacrifice or circumstance
and a journey surrounded by cells
of embezzled reality,
six days and nights without redemption,
and there is only a photograph
afterwards, a blurred image that hints
at shadows and whispering,
and the night is wild,
and the night is wild,
his thoughts and dreams have teeth
that they are sharpening on the snow,
there is a ringing in the distance,
and very soon he will have to go.




I Don't Sow Horses


I don't sow horses.

Chequered tablecloths are laid over hills,
and the wine stains are illusory pools
that once reflected the death of foxes.

Even the ferns, here, wag cynical tongues
against the tyranny of flags and clocks.
We have packed our lies, preparing to leave.

Night.  The lights extinguished, each in its turn,
we are alone in this immensity,
the lonely stations of our suffering.

I don't sow horses.

Poems on a bonfire of silences,
that is the poverty of the bourgeois,
while the honour of thieves is held sacred.

This journey enters, like a ritual,
the living heart that is itself defined
by journeying.  Slowly, we are turning

into something that is unfamiliar,
something other.  We will no longer be
afraid of darkness or of difference.

I don't sow horses.

The hills are chequered with such reflections
that, on stolen nights, the foxes dream of.




The Bone Horse


Who rides upon the bone horse?
The nights are quiet, lately,
and my heart has grown its hair too long.

What fear is latent on the moonlit hill?
They have sounded a horn from the ramparts
of my father's peacock farm.

What is this red light burning my eyes?
The trials of bloodthirsty judges
ripple out across unploughed fields.

Which of nine directions will take me hence?
I do not know my path through falling snow,
or the way the southern wind will blow.

Who killed the goose, and who the rat?
Driftwood justifies the beach,
and ships that will not reach safe harbour.

What do we wait for, in this place?
There is a memory, and lanterns glimmer,
along an empty road that we don't walk on.

What pulpit is this, that I must speak from?
The spring trees are lighter
than they were this time last year.

Whose memorial has been raised upon the street?
The orchards are flowering,
and bulls bellow from the fields.

Who sits upon the druid's wicker chair?
Candles have been lit in the green chapels,
and on all the hills above town.

Who rides upon the bone horse?
After all this, tell me again
in whispers that will break mountains.




Philip Kane lives in Kent, England. He is a founding member of the London Surrealist Group. His writing has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies. His books include The Wildwood King (Capall Bann, 1997) and Unauthorised Person (Cultured Llama, 2013). His latest publication in book form is the chapbook entitled Dramatis Personae (Whisky & Beards, 2019).




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