Glen Cavaliero: Towards the Waiting Sun

Glen Cavaliero
Towards the Waiting Sun

March 2011. 98 pp. ISBN-13 978-3-901993-31-2
£10.50 (+ 2.00 p&p), €11.00 (+ 2.00 p&p), US$13.00 (+ 3.00 p&p)

"In this collection, Glen Cavaliero invites his readers to make a journey with him, a journey towards the waiting sun,and he has set about his dark and fractured landscape four signposts as possible protective guides to the poems which huddleunder them: "Dissolution", "Unlucky Numbers", "Here and There", and "Springboard". In a poetic climate which is choc-a-blocwith relativism, explorations of a post-modern world where meanings are suspect and tease the reader with their bafflingshape-changes, this collection obstinately assumes the need for poetry to move the human heart, to confront and examinepain, loss and heartbreak, but not to be imprisoned by them, and to hearten the reader to continue his or her own journey.And throughout, the image of the Cross recurs, and images of dark and molten landscapes, both natural and of the heart,out of which light strikes or can be struck."

Peter Scupham, "A Journey"

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Excerpts from Towards the Waiting Sun

Troubadour

If he were one of the young poets of course he'd sing
of how he laid you that first time, one summer evening
when the bats flickered and you were frightened,
and he eased you out of fear and into peace,
into the sad, sweet, delirious release
that was his vindication.
He would sing of the streaming hair and eyes,
would salute the budding womb,
the warm soft-downed belly of you,
would hymn your snow-white thighs
so slowly yielding
and would tell of the rapture of your smile.
He would be full of pity and sorrow and care,
but above all he would tell them
of how he laid you.

But no longer a young poet he can only tell
of how once it seemed that he knew you, how once he tried to
and how he failed. You were never there,
girl, for him though you walked a hundred pavements,
your hair in a long bob then, breasts tight;
and the little pointed toes
that tapped reproach at laggard lust
would taunt his sleep in summer
till he broke out in adolescent spite
and tried. In vain.
How can he tell
where you have gone? Your hair now
is a straight cascade, you sleep lightly
around, those thighs of yours magnetic
in reproach.

But, girl, he'll be your lover still, and though he sings
to a sour tune, do not complain; the tune is yours
and you must hear it, though you smile
from a thousand posters, snappy in your abandon,
loving and loved by stalwart boys - the lure
of every sale.
Have you no smile for him? He stands
outstripped and beaten;
but, for the sake of mothering tears, a little hope,
and his own raging pride
he too will boast
that he has known you, cherished the quick of you,
girl, who bind and build him, more,
far more, than all those eloquent
young prodigals - your boys.

Hunts

Shiny landscape smeared on china
dish, green with a swirl of black
to tie brown acres into place:
the roads whip round on swallow curves
the spot you now must try to get at.

It refracts. Silver needle
scaling the tower directs to another
somewhere near, but how far
horizons are. No shade is here
for slow easement of heart or bladder.

Sabbath occlusion. And the wind's a razor.
In the market square you find the Gents is locked.