LXIV - Sonnet to Mithras

you are the missing light you are Mithras
you straddle the hidden moon in Taurus
and lead skies of Saturn ...

LXIII - Sonnet on Cézanne

Cézanne’s skull is the first fruit of time
the apples and pears skulls too and not seed
laid out on ...

LXII - Sonnet after Discussing Wu Guanzhong

you have taught me that ink by-passes time
and takes a back-road from reality
to go on a short-cut through ...

LXI - Sonnet on Plato's Cave

darkness outside - would Plato’s cave really work ?
the threefold city and threefold soul
would operate beneath a starless mirk
calculate ...

LX - Sonnet on Domitian's Feast

Domitian put on a banquet
where the dinner guests were introduced
to their deaths amidst black drapes and blankets
and ...

LIX - Sonnet to Blackstar

the red king who lay with the white queen
putrefies into a blackened head
the black sun after stands purged ...

LVIII - Sonnet for Napoleon III

Napoleon III is our furthest
pylon of reported memory -
one man’s great-aunt saw him at Chislehurst
I a foetus grew ...

LVII - Sonnet to the Torso of a Maenad

the stone is fruit with her and the marble
still breathes - her dress falling from breast and thigh
while beneath ...

LVI - Sonnet on Yiannis Ritsos' " Moonlight Sonata"

the widow is a maenad undone
by monologue while the young man whose shirt
she did up could stand for ...

LV - Sonnet on the Massacre at Smerwick - 10 November 1580

if Winchester’s the capital of Thrace
Mutability makes St Albans stand
Thameside and Ireland’s an inside-out place
where Machiavellis plant ...