PDF version of the book here - John Robert Colombo

250 Pages·2015·3.48 MB·English

All the Poems of John Robert Colombo (2005)
Parts of the World (2006)
Autumn in August (2007)
End Notes (2008)
A Far Cry (2009)
End of Greatness (2010)
Entresol (2011)
Less of Light (2012)
A Standing Wave (2013)
A World of Differences (2014)
Late in the Day (2015)
Late in the Day
Poems and Effects of 2014
John Robert Colombo
Colombo & Company
Dedication
For Doris and Ted Davy
Friends Seldom Seen
ISBN: 978-1-894-540-74-2
Copyright (c) 2015 by J.R. Colombo
Colombo & Company
42 Dell Park Avenue
Toronto Canada M6B 2T6
Cover design: Bill Andersen
Printed in Canada.

-4-
The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is;
acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it
would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state.
Joseph Conrad, “Author’s Note” (1920), The Shadow-Line (1917).
Indeed, he was sensitive rather than responsive. In every remark he found
a meaning, but not always the true meaning, and his life though vivid was
largely a dream.
Characterization of the Englishman Cyril Fielding in E.M. Forster’s novel A Passage
to India (1923).
Human life, when it is human, is a compromise and a conflict.
T.S. Eliot, “A Neglected Aspect of Chapman” (1924), “An Unpublished Essay by
T.S. Eliot,” The New York Review of Books, 7 November 2013.
Now there, my dear, is a subject for the poet – for the poet of the future
who must be also a psychoanalyst – and perhaps diabolist, too.
Socialite Anthony Blanche addressing painter Charles Ryder in Evelyn Waugh’s
novel Brideshead Revisited (1945).
Thus it is enough for the poet to be the bad conscience of his age.
Saint-John Perse’s address, Nobel Banquet, City Hall, Stockholm, December 10,
1960, Nobel Lectures, Literature 1901-1967 (Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishing
Company, 1969), edited by Horst Frenz.
Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.
Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematographer (1986) quoted by Geoff Dyer in
Zona (2012).
-5-
Note
This collection consists of the poems and effects that were composed by
the author between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2014. They appear
here in the order of their composition, along with entries for the same
period from the same author’s “Dream Diary.” This collection marks the
concluding volume in the series of ten volumes issued on an annual basis
in this form following the appearance of All the Poems in 2005.
CONTENTS
Note 5
Tour of Creation 13
Questions for “Ashley Madison” 13
Excursus 14
A Form of Life Hereafter 14
One Moment in Time 15
Circuit of Life (Female) 15
Death 16
The Time of the Gifts 16
Drive or Drivel? 17
Late in the Day 17
Things Do Disappear 18
The Burning Ghats 18
It Is Enough 19
Every Word 20
Interpenetration 20
Passacaglia 21
Ravel’s Bolero 21
Divertimento 22
Incident 22
List Found in an Auctioneer’s Art Catalogue 23
Beloved in Death 23
For the Purposes of This Poem 24
Heaven, Hell, Eden, Earth 25
Complaint 25
Saintly Sinner, Sinning Saint 26
-7-
Unlike Myself 26
Within and Without 27
Everyday Saint 27
Aphorisms for Czes≥aw Mi≥osz 28
Messiah 29
So No More 29
Recurrence 30
Like Life 30
Future Considerations 31
For Want of a Better Word ... 31
Many Parts 32
Reversibles 33
William (Billy) Jamieson 34
Short Fantastic Fictions 35
Surprising Scenes 38
Dreamscape 38
Foreign Parts 39
Much as I Dislike 40
Short Poem 40
Conditionals 40
Ruminations 41
Life’s Secret 41
For Ruth, on Her Seventy-eighth Birthday 42
Name Change 43
Which? 43
Intense Verb Tenses 44
One of Those Women 45
Half Moon Street 45
For the Most Part 46
Philosophies 47
In His Harem 47
Quip 48
Cold Mountain 48
Ditty 49
Progress of Life-making 50
Hitherto Unrecorded Sayings of a Sage 50
-8-
Dirty Talk 51
In Love 51
Juno Beach 51
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City 52
If I Were 53
Lines Perpendicular 55
Sough of Despond 56
Reading My Books 56
The Composition of This Message 57
Frontiers in Space 57
Speechlessness 58
Cross of Conscience 59
To Compose a Poem 59
Canada Day 2014 59
Stocktaking 60
The Legacy of the Lost 60
Admissions 61
Sketch 61
Rhymes 61
Attitudes as Platitudes (and Vice-versa) 62
A Problem for Us 63
Deliberations of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates 63
What I Have 64
Ontario 65
My Writings Go Unread 65
Advice to Myself 66
A Woman’s Congeries 67
Exotic Place Names 67
Advisory 68
Migrations 68
Down and Up 69
The Long Body of Man 70
Whatever This Is 70
This Poem 71
Humour Plus Metaphor 71
Rise and Fall 73
-9-
The Composition of a Poem 74
To Make of Life What One Can 74
Bad Cub 75
Malady of Mankind 75
In My Day 76
Summer Ends, Fall Begins 77
The World before Me 77
Caressings 78
My Body and I 78
Random Noises 79
Outline for a Poem 79
Marvels and Miracles 80
Some Thoughts on Sights and Sites 81
C.P. Cavafy 81
Credo 82
My Lines 82
What Lasts 83
Excursus on “Arab” 83
Some Talk 84
Periods of Picasso’s Art 84
List Poem 85
Mankind: A Vision 86
End of Times 86
I Spy 87
It Ends like This 88
Comic God 88
Induction 89
Movie Shots 90
My Country 90
Kathleen Raine’s “Collected Poems” 90
James (Jim) George 91
42 Dell Park Avenue 92
After a Line by Kathleen Raine 92
Lot in Life 93
Iris 93
Someone Else 94
-10-