Wednesday, July 20, 2011

PROF GUY BUTLER

I'd forgotten just what an exceptional man Guy Butler was.

Go to:
http://www.ru.ac.za/6246

Or if that's too much effort, just read this, one of his poems:


The Divine Underground

Souls in flagrante delicto or in extremis
stretched on the rack or Cleopatra’s bed,
you have no news for me,
me, not fit to tread
where hawk-sure men of the media
zoom lenses down on your limbs in spasm
or claw at your grunts or ululations
with glittering microphones.
No, I go hungrily slumming for those who wear
a habit of discipline on every gesture, armed
in still affection, steel-bright after years.
I find them poorly disguised as morons,
under distorting stars,
lost in their lands of birth, quite ousted by
smooth bastards or daughters in gorgeous gowns:
in the cold, in the shade,
like lepers, like untouchables, in whose eyes
our storms of guilt dissolve in their light of forgiveness:
they know what they have lost,
they guess at what they have gained;
divining an innocent justice, they endure
our grand and murderous razzmatazz
as if they were God’s spies.

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