Month December 2022

Dinggedicht: Okukor

(for Philip Henry Jones) From low land overflowing with treasures from plundered countries, from Jesus College which did not disown him, after the feasts of male intellectuals, with fettered feat and patterned plumage suggestive of the fine art of wax…

Dinggedicht: Shallow bowl

Roman glass was shattered by an explosion of modernism into facets which were glued together, the outline bearing the trace of hands, a vessel containing memories which croak audibly, the recreation transparent, boasting of the scars – it stands still…

Dinggedicht: Inscription

A stone was scratched and whittled to leave a trace, the darkness of the cuts illuminating the urge to commemorate, a treasure wrapped by the wind and kept for centuries, subject of a rite of wetting with rain, the message…

Dinggedicht: Amber brooch

(for Philip Henry Jones) A tree sucked from the ultra-dark earth nourishment and turned it into sap the colour of burning, which crystallized translucent around air from antiquity; Art Nouveau silver twigs hold it, frame of the living light of…

Dinggedicht: Paperweight

Turquoise claws of a wave turning but the air escaping from its grasp, trying to rise to the surface but paralysed because the water is frozen. ‘Dinggedicht: Pwysau papur’© copyright text and translation Mary Burdett-Jones 2022