composite by Stephen Alsford
adapting photos by Gabriel Seah (Atlas), Stephen Alsford (cityscape, globe, cat),
Harold Villaflor (fireworks), The Hubble Heritage Team AURA/ STScI/ NASA (star cluster).
| home page | list of works |
|
From hands impatient, skeletal, a trellis grew, Fountain of youth Its ward and saviour, sprightly spite To quench a thirst, it could not quite. Winter at last held fast its water alchemized as stone Whilst, stay-at-home, A sleeping wizard let his genie groan. Clay, untended, shaped as chance assigned And greybeard woke Astonished at his frankenstein: "Imperfect phantom, false creation – not my son!" But tirades echoed, "What's begun's begun." The past is perfect, future fiction yet, So to relate the present our methuselah begets In mime the touchstone artistry from honeyed tongues, Its course outrun, Surrenders Spirit but to Shape, Unleashing fate to monstrous rape ... On, ever on, perpetuates the architect's design Yet groping, blind, Envelopes chaos, casts its vines behind. Between the present metaphors of carcass steel Reel and un-reel Extravaganza churns its cogs And feeds its purpose to the dogs, Grind and unwind some complicated passage of the plot. Regret me not – For I'm the maker, my machine forgot. |
| (1975) |
|
composite by Stephen Alsford adapting photos by Gabriel Seah (Atlas), Stephen Alsford (cityscape, globe, cat), Harold Villaflor (fireworks), The Hubble Heritage Team AURA/ STScI/ NASA (star cluster). |
| Created: November 17, 2014. | © Stephen Alsford |