Today’s poem last appeared on the blog in February 2010 and is not only a firm favourite of mine but, judging by feedback, has proven popular with many readers, straight as well as gay. It has always gone down well at poetry readings and I love reading it, especially to mixed gay/straight audiences.
New readers may be interested to know that I included it in a very informal poetry reading I gave on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square back in July 2009 as my contribution to sculptor Antony Gormley’s One and Other ‘live sculpture’ project to view the performance, click on the link, but be warned, the whole thing lasts an hour:
http://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20100223121732/oneandother.co.uk/participants/Roger_T [ [For now, at least, this link needs the latest Adobe Flash Player and works best in Firefox; the archives website cannot run Flash but changes scheduled for later this year may well mean the link will open without it. Ignore any error message and give it a minute or so to start up. The video lasts an hour. ] RT March 2018
Update (April 2016): I also read the poem on the very first video I recorded for my You Tube channel.You can catch the recording below, too, as some readers tell me they cannot always access You Tube for one reason or another; it is the second of two poems I read there. [Later, Graham (best friend and cameraman) and I discovered how to insert a voice file into the video while editing. In later videos, viewers are spared the sight of yours truly fluffing about and the poems relate more closely to the video. The channel was very experimental and we did not expect much interest in a poetry channel, but feedback suggests otherwise and we plan to add new video/poems as and when the opportunity arises.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1z_NiNpRQw
If neither link works, go to my channel and search under 'On Hampstead Heath'.
http://www.youtube.com/rogerNtab
A NATIONAL TRUST OUTING
Update (April 2016): I also read the poem on the very first video I recorded for my You Tube channel.You can catch the recording below, too, as some readers tell me they cannot always access You Tube for one reason or another; it is the second of two poems I read there. [Later, Graham (best friend and cameraman) and I discovered how to insert a voice file into the video while editing. In later videos, viewers are spared the sight of yours truly fluffing about and the poems relate more closely to the video. The channel was very experimental and we did not expect much interest in a poetry channel, but feedback suggests otherwise and we plan to add new video/poems as and when the opportunity arises.]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1z_NiNpRQw
If neither link works, go to my channel and search under 'On Hampstead Heath'.
http://www.youtube.com/rogerNtab
A NATIONAL TRUST OUTING
On my way downstairs, I paused
to look at a portrait on the wall
and it winked at me, opened
its mouth and said (laughingly),
“Yes, I too was gay in my day
although the word not invented
nor times quite ready to receive
the unseemly likes of a common
painter and his patron lover - so we
had to lie, indulge in subterfuge.
No one had the faintest idea,
certainly not the family (wife and
children included) or that ogre
Establishment whose inner circle
I was free enough to tread, so long
as I dared not bring it into disrepute
by word or deed. Oh, I loved them
well enough, indeed. But it’s not for
love of those I pose - radiating,
I suspect, an inner happiness?
Ah, yes, you understand. It is my
lover’s brush, exploring mind
and soul, touching what makes life
real (no trappings and trimmings
comprising Society’s notion - of
propriety or political expediency,
nor even an image of home fires
burning) – but Love, in all its
rampant glory, telling my story
here and now, for whomsoever might
care to consider, critically, a glow
in the cheek, lift of the eyebrow,
crook of the knee, hands pointedly
showing off slender fingers, touches
invariably missed in critique, put down
to art’s mystique, few appreciating
the intimacy between lover and lover,
bouncing off each other, long after
the oils runs dry, spoils of eternity.”
In my own time I descended, feeling
befriended
befriended
Copyright R. N. Taber 2004; 2006
[From: The Third Eye by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2004; a printing error in the first print run was subsequently corrected and the above version also included as an Appendix to A Feeling for the Quickness of Time, Assembly Books, 2005.]
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