{"id":1461,"date":"2008-11-12T13:05:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T13:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1461"},"modified":"2008-11-12T13:05:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-12T13:05:00","slug":"paul-levy-is-saying-goodbye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/paul-levy-is-saying-goodbye\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Levy is saying goodbye"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Saying Goodbye) On The New Navaho Plains (at a Tribal Gathering)<\/span>


she was clothed in the romance of Keates with Byronic swirls shifting within the folds of her skirt         she sat on the ground in Shakespearian attitude<\/span>
                                                                    opened a book <\/span>
and read perfumed verses    the story of a kiss unfolded into life                  (the past <\/span>
                                                                   the dead past always grows<\/span>
                                                                      gilt edged and glorious)<\/span>

he watched her words floating off into the green landscape <\/span>
                                             and head over heels<\/span>
                                                    over heels <\/span>
                                                            over heels down rolling hills<\/span>

into the swoon of long grasses<\/span>
                               tinged paradise blue with summer\u2019s glee<\/span>
                                                                        the essence of sun heat     
trawled the valleys like a mist rode the banks and crept over stones        <\/span>

it was the babble of the brook that told him of her eyes falling into a saddening gaze<\/span>
at first he couldn\u2019t understand why        befuddled     then he caught sight of a tiny reflection like a kick of soot an insignificant smudge of a cloud that was drifting lonely in the big sky  <\/span>

he prayed that it would wander aimlessly into the arc of the horizon and then fall off the edge of the world but instinctively he knew that from now on it would always be there<\/span>
                                                                                               hanging <\/span>
                                                                                              over him <\/span>
like an exclamation mark<\/span>
for in one momentous era of time he\u2019s basking in sunshine the next he\u2019s suddenly drenched in a shower of symbolic rain<\/span>

            that was the moment when summer was over<\/span>
he felt it instantly<\/span>
                   as if a season could have a sell-by date<\/span>
                                  warmth expired<\/span>
what still mystified him was a group of Navaho Indians performing a rain dance in the middle of the English countryside<\/span>
                he could hear drums            beating  <\/span>
                feel the pulse of spirits      vibrating  <\/span>
                the shaman\u2019s chants            resonating  <\/span>
it grew in intensity  <\/span>
                louder<\/span>
                       faster<\/span>
                              twisting and curling around his spine   every muscle                                            twitching<\/span>
               contracting<\/span>
locked graphospasm<\/span>

and every nerve-ending blossomed as a dream catcher <\/span>
and every dream caught became tear in the transition of demise<\/span>

as he was attempting to interpret this apparition<\/span>
                she had walked        barefoot<\/span>
                             treading on the daisies<\/span>
                             brushing hours off of dandelion clocks<\/span>
leaving him as an isolated silhouette against the glare.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/font>* Paul Levy is a regular IS&T contributor and publisher of the <\/span>Clueless Collective<\/span> spoof poetry site that aims to be “<\/span><\/font>a
\nspoof of some of the more, shall we say arty and pretentious, literary
\nmagazines”. (And he turns up in the freezing cold to attend my poetry readings so he's an all-time good guy in my book \u2013 Charles Christian) <\/font> www.cluelesscollective.co.uk<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

** As the layout of this piece is likely to be thrown into confusion by different browser settings, we've also attached this poem as a PDF file. Click on the paperclip to read it.<\/span>
<\/font><\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Saying Goodbye) On The New Navaho Plains (at a Tribal Gathering)she was clothed in the romance of Keates with Byronic swirls shifting within the folds of her skirt         she sat on the ground in Shakespearian attitude                                                                    opened a book and read perfumed verses    the story […]<\/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-1461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461","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=1461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}