Featured in New Lyre Summer 2023
Eurydice
That was the Sistine Chapel, wedged between
our complex life and all that slept beneath
your kisses, and my curses, as we danced
love's simple dance beneath the midday moon.
Which might as well have been the midnight sun
the way you looked at me… (And I looked back!)
You could have walked along that look - (to share
what dream?) - as if it were a bridge across
some gentle stream - or else lust's raging torrents.
I loved that look you gave me! It went such
a long way back it reached to where I stretched
my feet, almost, yet did not dare to fare
the way I stared at you, just then, upon
that Bridge of Sighs, close to the Source of Being.
John H.B. Martin is a poet who lives in London, England. He is a graduate of London University and Australia National University and has been writing for many decades. He has written four novels and is working on a fifth. His magnum opus is a six-volume epic poem. Most of his work is yet to be published.
Read more of John H.B. Martin’s poetry.Acteon, Song of Songs & Other Poetry
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Les Sylphides
Featured in New Lyre - Winter 2021 Les Sylphides By John H.B. Martin From a Photograph Flesh longed, at last, to be so impregnated and so inseminated, like a flower is pollinated by the breeze … (Or bees). So, too, the heart called out for deeper comfort
John, your poem is delightful to read, with its fluent meter and images of The Vatican, the Lady, and Venice. Since my adolescence and Italian pilgrimages, I have had in my mind Childe Harold's evocation of Venice and its famous bridge.