NIGEL HUMPHREYS POET

WINNER OF THE DECANTO POETRY COMPETITION 2007

 

            Henri Gaudier

 

 

 bellclap of iron on rock

in the manner of relief,

something of this:

the block spitting out teeth

perhaps the slow calcification

of the sculptor in marble dust

as though with his own flesh

he ransoms his subject from stone

 

his mallet and chisel hatch

an unbreakable cuneiform

split, cough and flitch

detonate miters, chip off cliffs

unshell a mountain peak

 

he agonizes over each strike as if

to a young queen’s neck

 

tools of teeth and claw sketch thews,

a narrow punch flutes veins

chases bone, fine rasps grow skin

to sweat grand cru

 

and slowly . . . slowly . . . subtracted

after many years

an incarnation rifts

from a quarry chrysalis:

 

a young man chiselled blind

poised on the plinth of acclaim

as a monument to human potential

looks back

through the sculptor

at a truth resolved from magma 

 

and his creator returns the glare

and shatters the statue with one blow

 

 

 

 

 

WINNER OF THE EARLYWORKS PRESS INTERNATIONAL POETRY COMPETITION 2006

 

 

                      MADONNA DELLA FEBBRE

                                St Peter’s Basilica

Her face was serene beyond time,

the utmost limits of genetic sculpture,

a miracle that shapeless drapes

could assume such earthly beauty,

yet there she stood, sharing grief

as a condition of redemption,

a nun

standing back from the crowds

her eyes transpierced by the Pieta

as if herself sculpted in marble.

 

She looked on the dead Christ asleep,

watched the blood dry

in the veins of his limp arm,

listened for soft breaths

her eyes salved in beatitude,

and absolute beauty its consequence.

 

Death would have struck unnoticed

in that symbiosis of flesh and stone.

The sublimeness of her awe

in a glaze of perpetual spirit

beyond my experience

drew me unwilling,

made me one part

of an exalted triptych of fixation.

 

But for them there was no fear;

their certitude hewn

from the quarries of Carrara,

postured in the magnanimity

of an extended hand.

 

 

 

WINNER OF WORDART NATIONAL POETRY COMPETITION 2006

 

                                       at Tate Modern 

a nubile somebody else came onto the patio

and ate a banana with a knife and fork,

made a meal of it                                                                                

                             In another room

the banana skin grew fur at break-neck speed

and a grand piano denoted in the ceiling

 

That done

      I sat at a table

                on the top floor

                               with my latte

and read someone’s newspaper

 

(Nobody had cleared up after Andy Warhol

nor towed away Lichtenstein’s cut-out car)

 

I thought it had been abandoned

but it belonged to a conversation at my table

air-brushed by binge wit and exhibited

by two young scribbles in profile

 

They used it as a jemmy to prise open

the silence between us,

                                             went on

to thickly admire a daughter    slapped

around all day   in a film-loop   by her mother

unnecessary     in white bra and knickers,

a perspective    they distrusted

 

As the coffee skinned, their semaphore

arched the condiment fence between us

sketching in a mindscape I leant against

 

I appreciated the irony

                         but what was the point

of them ?