Words for koto

                            Poem written in 1977. Rewritten on watercolour
                            backkground. Rewritten today, october 31, 2014,
                            See also Koto on this blog.

                      Monoprint with poem

Life drives us-

Life drives us on and on -

With boundless energy

Held by a hand unseen

Moved by a force unknown

Few in the bustling crowd

Awake and say I dream.



Yet life is real it seems -

In the rainbow bubble

We call life on earth

Time bound reality

There are few that know

And sense eternity -

Before the the bubble bursts

Ah so ephemerally!





                                            June  2014

Little Motif

                                 This is a painting i made in Amsterdam in 1985

Metaphysical

Our lives should hold a vaster space

adjacent to the manifest
we sometimes glimpse it, feel the face
the border of the page is blessed
extending out beyond this place.

Inways show us some unworldly view
all the imaginings of our race
of some Arcadian golden time
Satori or a deja vu
can they be found in one fierce flame?

Ah, all the streams we follow down
far from the wide and holy river
that tiny drop we call our own
and all that longing for the other-

Cursanuses double cone
light into dark-dark into light.
If all the worlds could now be known
in the moments sure insight-
the lord of time would turn about
and inside would be inside out!

2001

Zenscape

Invades

            the very core of things

cradles myth and history

          pervades our secret heart

      moves in and out

makes consummate configurations

     like knot holes in a tree

       the soul sap of a tree



The poem paints-

        japonica's in Wendy's garden

     upon a darkened ground

and look behind the bamboo bushes there

an unimagined landscape unrolls

    from out infinities

within ourselves

  sets the spirit free-


Those distant peaks-

  in shimmering gold and silver light.




                                                               Written after the death of my mother, 2012

One of the poems is called: Music for Koto, perhaps? This is a small koto I made in France with a few simple tools. Sound is beneath the image...enjoy

Manchester 1962 the hardest wood in the world

This is an image I made over the last year. It is based on the idea of a dancer and later the idea of the metamorphoses of Daphne from Ovid. Material is clay, wood and semi-precious stones. More photo's later.

Next to it is a painting i made in england when i was 24 on the same theme of metamorphoses of a figure in a landscape, where i was try trying to unify all the elements