{"id":1189,"date":"2008-03-14T16:26:17","date_gmt":"2008-03-14T16:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1189"},"modified":"2008-03-14T16:26:17","modified_gmt":"2008-03-14T16:26:17","slug":"portrait-of-death-as-an-artist-by-p-t-diep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/portrait-of-death-as-an-artist-by-p-t-diep\/","title":{"rendered":"Portrait of Death as an Artist by P T Diep"},"content":{"rendered":"

A portrait of death as an artist<\/span>



Light peels back the night from faces<\/span>
with prayers engraved on chiselled lips<\/span>

the mist of souls is teased towards the sky<\/span>
by the sun that lifts the veil to peep<\/span>

at death upon the ground<\/span>
already calling those bodies down<\/span>

the bodies of boys buried neck deep<\/span>
in metal tombs no longer draped in laughs.<\/span>

The water-colours of yesterday have dried,<\/span>
like oil, becoming water-fast.<\/span>

So time scrapes the scene and scrapes the scene<\/span>
until all flesh is gone and bones are stones<\/span>

that mark the beds of boys that overnight<\/span>
joined their forefathers in the grave.<\/span>

The tombs crumble into remnants,<\/span>
overrun by the forest's creep.<\/span>

Green crystals encrust copper,<\/span>
swords and helmets lie exposed.<\/span>

Earth draws the greens back down,<\/span>
reds and golds blur the setting sun.<\/span>

Black night tumbles from the sky,<\/span>
pierced by time's perfect aim.<\/span>


\u2022 Phuoc-Tan (PT) Diep is a regular contributor to IS&T. This poem first appeared in <\/span>Poetry News<\/span>.<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A portrait of death as an artistLight peels back the night from faceswith prayers engraved on chiselled lipsthe mist of souls is teased towards the skyby the sun that lifts the veil to peepat death upon the groundalready calling those bodies downthe bodies of boys buried neck deepin metal tombs no longer draped in laughs.The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}