{"id":19382,"date":"2019-06-28T08:00:19","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T08:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=19382"},"modified":"2020-12-09T15:47:55","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T15:47:55","slug":"colin-crewdson-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/colin-crewdson-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Colin Crewdson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Road to Kars<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Mevlana, or Rumi, Sufi poet and mystic, 1207-1273 spent much of his life in Turkey, <\/em><br \/>\n<em>where his tomb is still revered. Mevlana\u2019s poems are also set to music.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve tried every trick.<br \/>\nGathered around the guts, black tubing,<br \/>\nglistening containers of mystery:<br \/>\nthe engine won\u2019t run, won\u2019t<\/p>\n<p>pull its busload of passengers<br \/>\nup the pass any further.<br \/>\nChoked, grit in its fuel<br \/>\ndust in its filters, fatigue in its heart.<\/p>\n<p>There is no wind,<br \/>\nno movement, one voice.<br \/>\nin the solitude of emptiness, in the quiet<br \/>\nof eternity&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The air is eviscerated,<br \/>\ntoo weak to hold life:<br \/>\nthe mountains are folded corpses, bent<br \/>\nand yellow, racked up<\/p>\n<p>towards a plain blue sepulchre.<br \/>\nThe sun, fat with heat in the lowlands,<br \/>\nis thin as a blade in these heights,<br \/>\nsharpening\u00a0 the linocut shadows.<\/p>\n<p>The portly singer in his white shirt<br \/>\ncroons, beseeches, commands,<br \/>\nends with a flourish of prayer beads:<br \/>\nhe is the Seeker and the Sought, the Beginning and the Destination&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>We slump back into our sweat-damp seats.<br \/>\nThe bus roars off<br \/>\non its way up to Kars,<br \/>\nMevlana\u2019s joy in its pistons.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><strong>Colin Crewdson<\/strong> (mostly retired)\u00a0 lives in Devon, England. He spends most of his waking hours trying to keep a puppy from wrecking the vegetable garden.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The Road to Kars Mevlana, or Rumi, Sufi poet and mystic, 1207-1273 spent much of his life in Turkey, where his tomb is still revered. Mevlana\u2019s poems are also set to music. We\u2019ve tried every trick. Gathered around the guts, black tubing, glistening containers of mystery: the engine won\u2019t run, won\u2019t pull [&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":[138,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19382","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=19382"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19384,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19382\/revisions\/19384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}