The Palace of Tears
In memoriam - Henri Cartier-Bresson
Paul Murphy
Here is the Palace of Tears
A stolid, square building.
Bustling crowds cross and re-cross
Enter the U-Bahn, depart.
For homes, workplaces, infernal
Dwellings infested with machines.
Communication is no problem
For a street has a name.
People meet, populate cafes, bars
They have many trivial cares
And many trivial loves and likes
Such talk the future soon forgets.
Beneath the Palace of Tears
Are the trash cans, broken bottles,
Rubble, remains, a yesterday
Broken into, disinterred.
So the crowd disperses
It needs to be told what to do
So intimately, so easily
And a crowd can be led.
Raise a hand, wave a handkerchief
Read out the latest news:
Laugh, cry - the gamut of human emotions.
The eternal photographer grimaces, unkempt
His vignettes and silhouettes and Leica
Camera are everywhere, he is the neatly dressed man
On the train, merely immortal,
Well dressed but cold.
He fiddles with his Leica
He says nothing, he retorts (when questioned)
ÔI am a photographer and untrained.Õ
Not so much a doppelganger
Your brother, he departs.
At the Palace of Tears.
The carriage is chill, not so
Chill as death but almost so.
Morgenrot
Paul Murphy
Morgenrot und grau in meinem Fenster.
Meine Traeume sind Echter als die Realitaet
und auch trauriger. Honig und rotwein
drei Pferde in meinen Traum.
Morgenrot oder Daemmerung sind
besser ohne Dich. In meinem Fenster
ein kleiner Vogel und ein grosser Baum.
Drei Pferde, blau mit grauen Augen.
Im Lustgarten mit dir, spaeter.
Ankunft der Zug in Hauptbahnhof.
Madagascar
Paul Murphy
Rangily annotated clear sunrise, inhabitants of an external shell
or Viennese suburb: elderly teachers of languages, makers of bread,
fermenters of beer, poets, novelists, Zealots or formalised formalists.
ranged like a morse code of dots and hyphens on an imaginary island
through the thumb nail telescope that originated from a limp mucus
a spoilt yoghurt of semen or inchoate globules of milk or bacteria.
The grammar, syntax of palm trees unending beaches, each shark fin
an inverted question mark, a why, what or wherefore.
WHO IS BETSY KINGSMITH?
Paul Murphy
who you are, a mirage on a motorway
a get rich quick scam
something too good to be true and naked
on a car bumper, an imitation of something sexual:
hooker, policewoman, spy. deep Southern drawl;
a womanÕs name, a Confederate balloon
hoisted to rouse the vicinity, empty pants, vacant chair.
a photo reversed lidless eyes.
images of Sheridan, broken shaking,
an upside down ironclad, line of bayonets
or tattered flags, Southern cross.
Antietam, Potomac Ð names that seemed
just as many pink or white spots:
host of pixels or manic pointillism
penumbra, iron shavings, tumbleweed
emptied barns, fields torn by the wind.
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