The Third Man

Last weekend I watched The Third Man – had never seen it, had always put it on when I was really too tired to watch anything. Wish that image of Orson Welles (small tower of black) walking into the bright sterility of bombed out buildings and a Ferris wheel had been in my mind much earlier. It would have explained the Millennium Wheel outside the Houses of Parliament so well.

(It’s not the wheel: it’s the 800 years of slowly successful struggle against the divine right of kleptocracy that lie in ruins behind it.)

Angel IV

islands of pain in the midst of the burning
dark as Greek seas, dark as the slaughter of daughters
pass into night
while the wings reach out, peach, apricot, nectarine
and the fire shouts gold,
glory, fear me –

dark as slaughter around us now.
we wait for we don’t know what.