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06/11/08

Hyphen-21’s AGM took place on the night after Guy Fawkes, in the week of Barack Obama’s election victory (for a poem on the election result see “New Poetry” on this site)


22/04/08

Andrew Motion helped launch a new website for "Poems for..." at the Nehru Centre in London on April 22nd


New Poetry

The Election of Barack Obama

 


We needed chance to support this wonder -
not just the mechanics of evolution
littered with sacrifice and the dead,
nudging us on towards an edge -

but the chance of two disgraceful terms
and an opponent always too old, whose "maverick" heart
stalled at the crunch on fear and hate
wooing it in others and betraying himself ;

and then a thirst across America -
distraught in days of loss and fracture -
for something clean, fresh and remarkable
to be proud of and to lift the spirit ;

but then too we needed this man
from nowhere and from everywhere
who knew the time was his to claim
and saw his line

and held it and stayed upright
through months of hurricane.
Treasure him.
Keep him safe.

Rogan Wolf
05.11.08




World Press Contest Prize Winner. Akintunde Akinleye Nigeria, Reuters.
A man rinses his face after a gas pipeline explosion Dec 26th 2006.

The Last Emperor in Chaotic Times

 

The Last Emperor of Byzantium is assumed to have died on the ancient walls of Constantinople, when at last the City fell. But maybe he just wandered away - towards Thrace on the one side, or Anatolia on the other...

 

i

 

The last emperor stirs.

Chaos inspires him.

It brings back memories

of earlier convulsions

when he was the apex

uppermost in disaster.

Now citadels collapse again

and strange new progeny stagger

sleek and bewildered

across our tortured fields.

The last emperor hunches

into a ball, wheezy and crackling,

and hurries to join them.

He is sure this time

he will be our chosen one.

 

But what is there left to say ?

It has all been used up.

All the great redemptive words

fizzed and burned out

almost the instant they entered time

and for millenia

have hung in countless rooms

like lumps of raw clay

twisted and re-modelled

to ennoble and justify

the frets and furies that have always been.

 

But the last emperor

has no need of hope.

He lost it ages back

amongst the paraphernalia

of cities and face

and full diaries.

This is child's play.

Yes indeed, oh yes indeed

there's nothing left to say.

He sings to himself happily.

Against the odds another chance.

Against all the odds another chance.

Let's try.




ii

 

The last emperor confided

resting his feet, reaching for the water jug -

"I had a cheering thought today.

 

I realised the past is just

another set of possibilities

as rich in guidance and new ideas

 

as anything present or still to come.

The dead may still belong in the dance"

The last emperor was almost weeping now.

 

"And straightaway, the walls of the City

renewed themselves in my mind

and the dead rose from their mass grave

 

took back their faces, their noble eyes,

and became again my counsellors,

comforting me with their wit and high learning."

 

 

iii

 

When the great City fell all those years ago

the emperor had to give up communicating

with crowds. Now he secretes words in code

 

under stones and between buses, whisperings

deep in caves by the shore, scribblings

borne in grey balloons loosed to ride hurricanes.

 

It's more intimate that way, he says,

more telling

more effective in getting his message across.




“Blind Light” Antony Gormley, Haywood. Photo David Levene/ Guardian


iv

He tends to avoid caves for his resting.

They are too obvious and accesible.

He goes for between-space

and between-time

on the edges of snug living.

Fly-tips do well, for instance,

or gaps between fences

in the established parts of suburbia

where arguments over boundaries

can open space up a bit.

Allotment huts have proved satisfactory

shared with the odd fox or down-and-out,

or patches of spare paving beneath bridges

beyond where the cyclists pass.

And like the hawk and red kite

he is drawn to the motorway

and will often bed down within feet

of the juggernauts

blasting through

their sharp beams

searching infinity all night.

 




 

v

 

Since the last emperor lost his name

he's been invisible.

 

He asks himself,

does it matter

 

where I place myself

if no one can find me there ?

 

He wanders from city to quiet fastness

and there's no difference

 

except in the impact on him.

No one knows he has gone

 

and no one notes his arrival.

Yet on the mountain trail

 

he adds a small stone

to each cairn he passes.

 

There is no name on it

and no one will know

 

he placed it there.

But the stones will continue

 

to serve and guide

after the emperor is dead.

 

"I've learned to be

an invisible servant,"

 

says the last emperor

to himself.

 

 

Rogan Wolf                      


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The Emperor Unclothed and Learning How To Be 82
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The Emperor at Kerbside
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Three for Spring 07
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Four to Finish 06
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Two for Summer 06
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Three for Spring 06
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Three for December 05
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Three for October 05
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The Terrible Novelty of Light
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Word from the Far Bank
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Moments of Revelation
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High Tide
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I Hyphen Thou
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