Cuttings (from The White Goddess, by Robert Graves)
Sean Howard
I. Willow,
Merlin reflecting… (Prose
still trees?) Science as deep
as its branches!
II. Eve
of Armageddon? (‘Ah!’ Nietzsche
meeting the Death-Goddess…) Ego
always, stale mate?
III. Creative
evolution: agency the central
intelligence! (Lab, court air.) Clear-
cut, the blue Goddess!
IV. Last
fall, number crunching… (‘Lyric,’
extractive economy?) Myth,
bran & cherry…
V. Empire’s
roman. (Reason’s
bark.) Palm
butterflies.
VI. Faust,
power company? (Science, myth
laid…) Dante: Lord, the little
point in being!
VII. Prose,
edges nearer… (Monotheism, the One-
Tree Forest.) Language? App-
le of the Earth!
VIII. Glastonbury
Thorn, God felled by the Pur-
itans! (‘Clean sweep’ – fairy
dust?) ‘Sober’: stout & bitter!
IX. The snake-
skin blindfold. (Merlin’s
good looks!) Silence, God
reflecting…
Sean Howard is the author of Local Calls (Cape Breton University Press, 2009), Incitements (Gaspereau Press, 2011) and The Photographer’s Last Picture (Gaspereau Press, 2016). His poetry has been widely published in Canada and elsewhere and featured in The Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2011 & 2014) and The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope, 2017).
