{"id":15831,"date":"2018-03-03T08:30:43","date_gmt":"2018-03-03T08:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=15831"},"modified":"2018-03-03T08:33:21","modified_gmt":"2018-03-03T08:33:21","slug":"william-bedford-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/william-bedford-3\/","title":{"rendered":"William Bedford"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Listening to the Cock<\/strong>*<\/p>\n<p><em>I lived and worked in America. As the years passed by, I did not grow any younger.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Marc Chagall.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>New York! New York! O my America!<\/p>\n<p>my new-found land of skyscrapers and hope<\/p>\n<p>as the millions walk their walk to death.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You cannot leave your life behind you.<\/p>\n<p>Death walks beside you. Death is there.<\/p>\n<p>And Listening to the Cock is not America.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The cockerel is its own red background,<\/p>\n<p>with acrobatic legs and gaudy head,<\/p>\n<p>a fiddler fiddling in the bird\u2019s tail-feathers.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And do you see the egg the cockerel<\/p>\n<p>waits to lay, male and female together!<\/p>\n<p>I thought that was witty. I thought that was love,<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>like the cow turning its eyes towards us,<\/p>\n<p>on its face the faces of two young lovers.<\/p>\n<p>They said the images were old Chagall <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ciprobuyonline.org\">ciprobuyonline.org\/<\/a> \u2013<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>the crescent moon, the tree on its head \u2013<\/p>\n<p>but the cockerel\u2019s crow wakes a new dawn,<\/p>\n<p>my ruddy dawn lighting the world of lovers.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Is that hope? Is that America?<\/p>\n<p>New York! New York! O my America!<\/p>\n<p>my new found land of skyscrapers and hope.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>*1944<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>William Bedford<\/strong>\u2019s poetry has appeared <em>Agenda, The Dark Horse, The Frogmore Papers, Encounter, ink sweat &amp; tears, The Interpreter\u2019s House, The John Clare Society Journal, London Magazine, The Malahat Review, The New Statesman, Poetry Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Tablet, Temenos <\/em>and<em> The Warwick Review<\/em>. Red Squirrel Press published <em>The Fen Dancing<\/em> in March 2014 and <em>The Bread Horse<\/em> in October 2015. He won first prize in the 2014 London Magazine International Poetry Competition.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; Listening to the Cock* I lived and worked in America. As the years passed by, I did not grow any younger. Marc Chagall. &nbsp; New York! New York! O my America! my new-found land of skyscrapers and hope as the millions walk their walk to death. &nbsp; You cannot leave your life behind [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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-15831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15831","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15831"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16042,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15831\/revisions\/16042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}