Karen Bookguilder is intended to be a collection of poems 60 poems expressly for the Book Guild
by Mike Burr - the themes being dictated by or about its published artisans .
Painting
i feel that i am at most a painting
which flatters dimension but has no substance
with colour but only the tints and assemblage of colours
and not forthwith the vigour of enervated life
an approximation in a complexity
of thin and compressed varnished layers
a laminated pastiche that poses only as
a marginal virtue within that entertainment
by the momentary measure of its skill
dated and perhaps outmoded or misguided
in its values and its blurry once sharp subject
and by which it is left shaded without repair
its tarnished fabric frayed and fainter
in disrepute of its conception
i feel that i am as transient as a song
that upon the threshold of the harps of the night
echos among the courtyards of the world
i feel i am decomposed to light or dark or shade
and you are there carved upon your obelisk
your relief proud and happy
unremitting of my grief
and i am one small painting on its stony case
washed from colour onto the dusty stone
that pave their way from street to street
and town to ever aged town