The last train to Arcady

The art and poetry of Steev Burgess


Ask me anything  


The Reserve Stock (poem)

Since being made unemployed, the public library has become my office. How often I’ve sent the librarians scuttling off to the dusty basement to find what , and no one else seems to be looking for…

THE RESERVE STOCK(a Rondeau variation)


The Reserve Stock  is where I find
the books that most  inspire my mind,
in musty basements gathering
dust with pages  yellowing,
some titles marked and others, underlined.

The datestamp page  reveals to me
untouched since  Nineteen-Sixty-Three
I’m finding timeless poetry in 
                                                 The Reserve Stock.

The dead live on  between their lines
some forgotten,  some maligned,
Cleared away for  someone new
until the day, that they are too,
underground and  out of view in
                                                    The Reserve Stock 


© S Burgess


“The city gives - The city takes away”

“The city gives - The city takes away”


Julian Bell (poem)

JULIAN BELL
 
Shining bright
But kept in the dark
By Burgess, Philby, Blunt and MacLean,
At Trinity Cambridge he cast his spell
The Bloomsbury boy
Julian Bell.
 
When others warned
Of gathering clouds
He shouted “can’t you see the rain”
And soon it poured down from the sky
On Guernica
From a German plane.
 
Apostles* joined
The Soviets
With covert operations and
Young Julian
To Spain he went,
His cause - Spanish Republican.
 
His family
Fretting for their son
Said “why not join the ambulance corps”?
A safer course of action then,
Than hand to hand
In Civil war.
 
And wearing the socks
of Virginia Wolf
He drove across the sad terrain
Where Franco’s boot boys
marched along to “Long live death”
Their mad refrain.
 
In Civil wars
there are no laws
And no brotherly decency
And soon the tragic news it came
On valve set
short wave frequency.
 
The last post of Julian Bell
His ambulance bombed
By Spanish shell
On foreign soil
There spread a stain
Across Europe and then, the World
 
Blunt loved him physically, they say,
And Burgess secretly,
He swayed,
With Whisky bottle
In his coat
He wept silently in the rain.
 
Philby galvernised his soul
And bit his lip
As did MacLean
And ten years after World War Two
Brit’s holidayed
in Franco’s Spain.
 
In a deserted village church
Foresaken by true Christian souls
Neath stormy skies
A lonely bell
Rings poor Julian’s
Final toll.
 
S Burgess
 
* The Apostles were an elite club, taken over by the left wing intelligensia of Cambridge university in the 1930’s.



Fitrovia

When I lived in charmains’ flat in Fitzrovia, I decided to go out early on a Sunday morning and make a collage with scraps that I found within a small area of London (more or less seen on the map in the picture). The first things I picked up were all pink and purple, so I decided to stick with that colour scheme and this was the result.

The midnight show

I did a similar thing in Soho, and no particular colour scheme developed, but a theme of night life (unsuprisingly) did. I allowed myself to use pen and paint to unite all the images


“I ain’t gonna work  on Maggies farm no more”. My first job after leaving school was in the Civil Service. The offices I worked in were all in proximity of the Tate gallery (as was) in Millbank, where I would go to lunch-time lectures on art. Sarah O’Brian-Twohig was my favourite lecturer, the Freudian Simon Wilson was good too,  and I owe them much of my art education.  Anyway, I’d discovered collage long before that in that very gallery, so I collected bits and pieces of no-confidential/secret civil service stuff to make this with.

“I ain’t gonna work  on Maggies farm no more”.

My first job after leaving school was in the Civil Service. The offices I worked in were all in proximity of the Tate gallery (as was) in Millbank, where I would go to lunch-time lectures on art. Sarah O’Brian-Twohig was my favourite lecturer, the Freudian Simon Wilson was good too,  and I owe them much of my art education. 

Anyway, I’d discovered collage long before that in that very gallery, so I collected bits and pieces of no-confidential/secret civil service stuff to make this with.



Back to the Engine (poem)

I wanted to combine a couple of things with this poem, an Enoesque methodical way of approaching it and something similar to one of Nick Cave’s “journey songs” where he “goes for a walk” (Darker with the day, Pappa won’t leave you Henry, Gates to the garden, Hallelujah are all examples)

 

————EVENTS OF JOURNEY————

   Landscape = Formal elements

    (Timbre, Rhythm and Rhyme )

Geography = Chosen structure

Geology = Cultural resonance

——————————————————————————-

BACK TO THE ENGINE

(the journey of life as seen on the Severn valley railway)

He climbed on board and

 sat back to the engine,

the present came

wrapped up in whisps of steam,

through  rolling hills

into the Severn* valley

following the river there

downstream.

There is no future when

back to the engine,

you care not what

lies by the track ahead,

the girl sat pretty

on a country station

or the endless tunnel

of the dead.

You only see what’s passed

back to the engine

and that can sometimes lead

to mild regret,

you see her waving madly

by the trackside,

you wish that you

were standing there instead -

of seeing that great future there

behind you,

a heart aglow but dar

as burning coal

and travelling only in

this narrow valley,

in the sunset’s incandescent glow.

Sometimes he thinks

he’d like a different journey,

sometimes he thinks

“I’d like a different scene”

“I may not know exactly where I’m going,

but oh, I know too well where I have been”.

Then suddenly,

he’s plunged in instant darkness,

into the earth with ashes,

smoke and steam,

his nose becomes accustomed to the sharpness

and then the daylight

offers a repreive.

Reborn, we still reverse

into the future,

we didn’t drive the train

or lay the track,

the signals are controlled

from far away now,

a rabbit hides behind

a round haystack.

S Burgess

* Severn, apparently means river in local dialect. The”River River”then.



“Hide”

“Hide”



Working title “Caledonian Still-life”. I wanted to make a picture that shows the world in those glowing pastel colours when the sky has been grey most of the day and then, in the late afternoon, the sun breaks through behind you and everything glows against the grey backdrop. I don’t know if there is a word or term for this very English sight. “Caledonian” comes from the railway being near Caledonian road in North London.

Working title “Caledonian Still-life”. I wanted to make a picture that shows the world in those glowing pastel colours when the sky has been grey most of the day and then, in the late afternoon, the sun breaks through behind you and everything glows against the grey backdrop. I don’t know if there is a word or term for this very English sight. “Caledonian” comes from the railway being near Caledonian road in North London.



As there has been a bit of interest in my cricket related collage/paintings of late, I thought I’d share a song of the band Blyth Power who also have a few cricket allegories in their songs. This one “Chevy Chase” springs to mind (not a great mash up video, but a clever song) as well as “Better to bat”. Their first studio album was called “Wicked women, wicked men and wicket keepers” too. Enjoy :)



“Give a girl a mask…”   A variation on Oscar Wilde’s theme and something that I think is so true. I was listening to a reading of extracts from the work of members of a writers group in Highgate and I’m sure I got some accurate insight into the people, their nature, their values and even their upbringing. This detection works more with novels and short stories I’d say, in poetry there is less places for unintentional truths to hide :)   PS sorry the scan is slightly fuzzy

“Give a girl a mask…”   A variation on Oscar Wilde’s theme and something that I think is so true. I was listening to a reading of extracts from the work of members of a writers group in Highgate and I’m sure I got some accurate insight into the people, their nature, their values and even their upbringing. This detection works more with novels and short stories I’d say, in poetry there is less places for unintentional truths to hide :)  

PS sorry the scan is slightly fuzzy