Lantern of the Winds

The wedding dinner is begun

But the wind, or rather the winds

Will not allow

The candle’s light to prosper

Instead, as dusk falls (on society)

It is the electricity which takes over

The incandescent, iridescent bulbs

Providing a warmer, more shimmering glow

Yet still we queue

To see the beginning of time

Or at least to see

Renaissance man’s artistic impression

Black and white

Are still the colours of the day

And for most of the menfolk

Beards were the passion of the day

Much as today

Where Steve Job’s mobile-phone-camera

Is the one essential accessory

Which man nor woman cannot live without

So let us commemorate

The birth of Apple (Computers)

How well it has prospered

Even without the Medici

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Black and White

The American woman has a rudeness

The best of which is that she doesn’t even know

Or care; take today, in the Uffizi

With her camera set to video

She stood right in front

Dead centre, of the Botticelli

Thereby embedding herself

Into everyone else’s photograph

But, as I say, she was so totally unaware

Such that she knows nothing, of her own celebrity

Meanwhile, I sit to write

To make a note of this supreme arrogance

Which, so I understand from television

Is propagated by their leader

Then, lest I forget

To make a note (pun intended)

Of the music exhibition

In the Academie of Sienna

Where, with way less visitors

There is ample space

For care and attention

Even time

To listen to the piano being played

As the lover sings an aria for his lover

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Passing By, Almost Forgotten

Slow train from Siena

Slow train to Firenze

Do not go beyond

The yellow line

Ten times more emotional

Than a picture or a painting

How sweet the sounds

That saved a soul like me

Cypress lined roads turn and twist

To the villa on the hill

Also simple apartments, beside the railway

Behind the allotment gardens

Castelfiorentino, where fake windows

Are painted on the building walls

Where the poppies grow, alongside

The diesel covered, extruded steel rails

A place where the washing hangs

Beneath the open windows

Where the old factory rooftops

Are covered in grass

These are the slow times

Of the twenty-first century

Where a new kind of man is required

To kick off the next renaissance

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Day Trip Traveller

Leaving Poggibonsi

Hare Krishna

Krishna Krishna

Leaving Poggibonsi

Hare Rama

Hare Rama

Hare Hare

Tickets scanned

Diesel online

Acceleration

Rama Rama

Hare Hare

The church is on the hill

The fool is on the hill

Hare Krishna

Krishna Krishna

The fool is by the till

Rama Rama

Factories and farmyards

Victories and vineyards

Hare Rama

Rama Rama

Entering Certaldo

Hare Krishna

Hare Krishna

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Daydreamer

Shee Vo Humm

On the earphones

Meditation music

On the rails from Firenze

Foot tapping

Eyes closed

A tired return

On the rails to Firenze

Shee Vo Humm

On the way

From paradise

And the stairway to heaven

Meadow grass and music

Mansion and meadow grass

Beekeeping, and vine-growing

Vine-growing, and beekeeping

Wichita do we ah

Wichita do we ho hey

Keep the foot tapping

Keep the eyes closing

Past the water pipe

To fill the steam engine

Opposite the water pipe

Which fills the steam engine

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