Variorum \ Found: Sound Sound

Nancy:  Day after day, week after week – I’ll never know how he saw us or what memories we may have revived.

Variorum

Did Thomas Hardy sit,

sit waiting, in his last years,

for poems to happen by, an old gentleman

in his study, sitting –

– My neighbor sat

at the wheel of his car, which was parked

in tall grass.  He blew the horn

at girls.

He blew the horn at girls, in salute;

at me, big bellied with my son

and pushing a stroller;

at my landlady with her print dress,

her farmer’s arms and flat chest.

Like Hardy, perhaps, he revisited us,

clothed our lusts; as his eyes failed

he may have had a thousand second chances

at the breasts and buttocks of his memories.

One day he blew the horn at the postman

and slid forward, his head on the wheel,

and we came from the houses

all around, women, came where he sat

waiting, all day, for us to pass by.

Alan:  In the 1970s, the Poetry Society of London was housed in a once elegant but by then seedy building in Earl’s Court.  In its dusty environs I was exposed to a variety of poetrys, from the rantings of Bob Cobbing to the flinty mythology of Basil Bunting’s “Briggflats.”  It was an era of “found poetry,” “sound poetry,” “concrete poetry” and who knows what else.  Combining two genres, I wrote the following: a found sound poem.  To be read aloud, andante, with a gently rocking rhythm.

Found:  Sound Sound

Bartholomew’s Gazetteer of Britain, 1977

The Sound of Shuna

the Sound of Ulva

the Sound of Vatersay

Soundwell

The Sound of Papa

the Sound of Pladda

the Sound of Raasay

South Sound

The Sound of Shiant

the Sound of Scalpay

the Sound of Islay

North Sound

The Sound of Gigha

the Sound of Barra

the Sound of Handa

Sound Gruney

The Sound of Harris

the Sound of Hoxa

the Sound of Rum

the Voe of Sound

The Sound of Monach

the Sound of Mull

the Sound of Luing

the Ness of Sound

The Sound of Eigg

the Sound of Arisaig

the Sound of Eriskay

Upper Sound

The Sound of Jura

the Sound of Kerrera

the Sound of Iona

Sound Heath

The Sound of Insh

the Sound of Bute

the Sound of Sound

the Sound of Sound

“Variorum” first appeared in Slow Dancer magazine.